Six months in: progress so far

It's now six months since I started my studies, so this seems like a good time to think about how my work has been progressing - and perhaps to talk a little bit about my day to day studies, which I realise I haven't really described much on this blog so far.

On Monday I attended a lecture about research methods - this is the third module I've taken since I've been here, all intended to provide particular skills relevant to my research. For example, last semester, as part of a module about systematic reviews, I studied the literature about library information services for small and medium enterprises in some detail. This is potentially quite relevant to information provision for social enterprises - although there are significant differences between these organisations and other types of business, there is some overlap in the kind of generic financial / legal / management information which may be needed.

Much of the rest of this week so far has been spent reading - I'm currently working on a draft literature review section about social enterprise, having already drafted sections on collection development and management issues. I have also been working on some draft documentation relating to the potential methods I might use when I move on to the practical research stage of my project. I'm hoping to get this finalised over the next month or so, with a view to starting the research proper in early June, if all goes according to plan.

The highlights of the last few months have definitely been my visits to the British Library, and the opportunity to attend relevant events like Footsey and the Digital Curation Centre Roadshow: especially all the conversations with librarians, social enterprise practitioners and others along the way!

Social enterprise and library collections

A comment on an earlier post asked an important question about how I'm connecting social enterprise with library collections. It's a central issue for the project and I hope this post will help to provide an answer.

I think the connection between social enterprise and collections exists on two levels. Firstly, the overall ambition for this project is to draw conclusions about library collections generally, developing a concept of what the library collection is in the digital world. Hopefully, looking specifically at collections for social enterprise will provide a wide-angle lens for identifying and exploring more general issues. Later in this post, I'll go into a bit more detail about why social enterprise seems to be useful field to study, and the ways in which it can be seen as reflecting some of the issues affecting modern library collections.

Secondly, I hope there will be a practical connection: helping to suggest how those involved with social enterprise can benefit from library collections, and helping to explore how libraries can optimise their collections to meet the needs of these potential customers. I should say that this practical connection isn't an explicit research objective - but I do hope that it suggests the possible practical value which this research could have, both for the field of social enterprise and for the library and information profession.

When considering how library collections for social enterprise may reflect issues for modern library collections more generally, I have found it helpful to think about the following aspects of the field:

• Social enterprise has a wide range of stakeholders - people who may be interested in information about the field potentially include social enterprise customers, students, and people working in the public or private sectors, as well as social enterprise practitioners, people thinking about starting up a social enterprise, policy makers, and academics and researchers in the field.


• The social enterprise community seems highly networked - there is a lot of information available on social media and networking websites, or located through personal networks: how do libraries find out about, and meet, the needs of communities which connect online or through networks?


• Social enterprise is an interdisciplinary field - there may be some general business information which is relevant to social enterprise, but the purpose of a social enterprise is crucial, and may involve finding out about specific topics in any of a range of different areas (health and social care, education, social exclusion etc).


• Social enterprise information may be found in a range of different types of library - information may be found in the collections of a range of libraries - such as health, government, business or voluntary sector libraries, or the libraries of professional associations - as well public, academic and national libraries. This means that the project can try to provide a genuinely cross-sectoral view of issues in library collections.


• Types of information for social enterprise - the types of information which may be most useful - such as information available from social networking websites or blogs - may not be the types of information traditionally found in a library collection.

There are more issues to explore here (I'm sure I'll return to this topic again), but I hope this helps to begin to answer the question posed earlier - any comments about this would be very welcome...

British Library, copyright and legal deposit

Last Friday I was at the British Library in London, which gives me an excuse to post this photo I took. (Complete with a nice spring sky, in contrast to today's foggy and gloomy Sheffield...)

The British Library has recently published Growing Knowledge: The British Library's Strategy 2011-2015 its strategy document for the next four years. This provides a useful insight into the key priority areas which the library has identified, and adds detail to the 2020 Vision document, which was published last year.

I've also been having a look at some of the submissions published so far on the Independent Review of IP and Growth website. So far, this just seems to be a selection of the submissions recieved (the consultation deadline was 4 March), but the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) contribution is interesting - discussing copyright issues surrounding orphan works, digitisation projects, open educational resources and the advantages of open access publishing. It also refers to a British Library document Driving UK Research: Is Copyright a Help or a Hindrance? detailing researchers' personal experiences of copyright issues.

Between 1709 and 1911, copyright was linked to the requirement for the deposit of copies of every published work with a selection of "copyright" libraries. Although these functions (copyright and legal deposit) have now been separated in legislation, the requirement to provide copies of every work published in the UK to each of the 6 legal deposit libraries (the British Library, National Library of Wales, National Library of Scotland, Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library and Trinity College, Dublin) remains. Another consultation has recently considered the implementation of extended legal deposit provisions to cover non-print materials, building on legislation originally passed in 2003. There's some useful information about this on the Consultation on the Draft Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-print Publications) Regulations 2011 website.

Sheffield iSchool researchers informal discussion session

Yesterday I gave a very brief informal presentation about my research as one of the speakers at a Sheffield iSchool researchers informal discussion session. You can read a summary of what I said in a post on the Sheffield iSchool researchers' blog. This covers some of the ideas emerging from my reading of the literature so far and some initial ideas about possible research methods. I wonder whether this might help to clarify how the collections and social enterprise elements of my research fit together; I'd welcome any comments about the ideas I discussed.

Although this was a very informal session, with a pleasantly relaxed atmosphere, I did feel slightly apprehensive about speaking about the project to a small group of colleagues and fellow researchers for the first time. In these situations, I tend to feel either very overprepared (as yesterday, reading from a script) or underprepared; although I do feel that with a little work what I said could form the basis of my elusive "coffee break pitch". The talk was followed by questions and discussion, providing useful feedback.

Reflections

I've been thinking about the two events I attended last week in a bit more detail. One interesting thing which both brought home to me was that my research is definitely a project of two halves - librarians are interested in the collections aspect and social enterprise practitioners are enthusiastic about their field; being equally interested in both is my role. I think I need to take this into account as I work on a coffee break pitch for my project (I would say "elevator pitch" but being trapped in a confined space with me talking about my research isn't really something I'd wish on anyone...).

There's a related issue here, which is that in both social enterprise and specialist services related to data curation, professionals need to be able to speak different languages to different stakeholders. In data management, this may range from training students to engaging in very technical conversations about relevant systems; for social enterprises, this involves talking with customers, funders, the public and private sectors and with other social enterprises.

It's an important skill in other areas of librarianship, too - seeing it done well at an enquiry desk is very impressive - but perhaps sometimes our systems don't facilitate this as well as they could. For example, many libraries call interlending and document supply "interlibrary loans" (for historical reasons, or perhaps because this is what library management systems call the modules we use to administer the process) - even when most requests are satisfied with photocopies / electronic copies which the customer can keep. I'd be interested to know what you think about these issues of "different languages" in librarianship - or any examples.

Footsey

I've just returned from a trip to Footsey, a social enterprise trade fair which took place at Doncaster racecourse. I've written briefly about what social enterprises are in a previous post, but I have to admit that abstract definitions and my initial reading on the topic hadn't really prepared me for the variety and breadth of social enterprise activity represented at today's event (and most were just from the Yorkshire and Humberside region). Stalls included social enterprises, funding and investment organisations and networking and support groups. Most of the people I spoke to seemed genuinely interested in my research, with a range of opinions about the significance of libraries in providing information for social enterprise.

I also attended a question and answer session and a couple of workshops (one by Doncaster West Development Trust about social enterprises and public sector contracts and another about a soon to be launched social enterprise emerging from an NHS organisation). Key themes emerging from these sessions included:

• The challenge of securing investment in the current climate, with the loss of revenue streams affected by public sector cuts - the recent Growing the social investment market document was mentioned, outlining government thinking about opportunities for new forms of social investment;


• The range of opinions (positive and negative) about the potential impact of government policies - such as the bills currently before Parliament about localism and the reorganisation of the NHS - on social enterprise;


• The importance of networks - between social enterprises, but also as widely as possible with other organisations, such as local authorities, health and social care organisations and the private sector;


• The challenge of providing staff learning and development opportunities within social enterprises - for example, in order to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to compete effectively for contracts.

Just like Umbrella, I've managed to come away with far too many leaflets and other bits of ephemera - it may take me a while to read them all...

Digital Curation Centre Roadshow

Today I attended the first day of the DCC Roadshow Sheffield: Institutional Challenges in the Data Decade.

Amongst the participants, librarians were in the minority: only two (of eight) speakers were from libraries; the role libraries are expected or able to play in leading on this issue clearly varies considerably between organisations. The University of Sheffield's Director of Library Services, Martin Lewis, spoke of managing research data as one of the biggest professional challenges facing academic librarians. He and other speakers also emphasised the importance of close cooperation across different departments within an institution.

Dr Liz Lyon (DCC Associate Director) discussed the scale of the data challenge, mentioning a recent special data-focussed issue of Science (11/02/2011), and suggested three useful ways of thinking about data:

• "data sets are becoming the new instruments of science" (quoting the Report of the International Panel for the 2009 Review of the UK Research Councils e-Science Programme);


• "data as the new special collections" (quoting Sayeed Choudhury) - I think this is a particularly useful approach from a library perspective;


• data as the "crown jewels" (Charles Arthur and Michael Cross).

The presentation also discussed the findings of the report Open science at web-scale regarding transparency in scientific research, the growth of "citizen science" (crowd-sourcing research tasks) and the use of data in predicting outcomes.

Key data management issues include:

• developing data management policies (increasingly a factor in Research Council funding evaluations);


• ethical issues in data sharing;


• data storage (including cloud computing - and the recent HEFCE grant for development).

The presentations which followed provided five case studies of projects managing, using, or providing training about, data. Meik Poschen described the Manchester eResearch Centre MaDAM project working with biomedical researchers. Two presentations covered data management training programmes: Richard Plant discussed the University of York's DMTpsych training for psychology postgraduates and Stuart Jeffrey talked about the DataTrain programme for postgraduate archaeologists and anthropologists at the University of Cambridge. Mark Birkin discussed the NeISS (National eInfrastructure for Social Simulation) project, which facilitates data curation and data use for developing models to predict the impact of policies on populations.

Matthew Herring (Digital Library Officer, York) described different tools for data management in use at the University of York - including YODL (York Digital Library), a multimedia resource currently mainly containing images relating to the university's research. This presentation also provided the quotation which, for me, summed up the day and seems like a good way to finish this post: "openness rocks".