Council on Library and Information Resources

Program and Research Agenda

2007-2010

BACKGROUND AND STRATEGY

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is recognized for its original research and fundamentally important insight promulgated over many years. During the past decade, marked by transformations in nearly every aspect of higher education—libraries, research methodologies, preservation of and access to scholarly resources, publishing and communication models, and broadly the organization of knowledge—CLIR has convened meetings, workshops, and symposia; established new programs; and published widely on issues deemed worthy of sharper and more rigorous focus. It has as much as any organization contributed to our understanding of this swiftly transmuting world, and our response to better managing its implications. CLIR, as stated in its own literature, "scans the environment, considers the most important problems that are amenable to solution, engages the best minds in analyzing and solving those problems, and disseminates the results to influential decision makers." CLIR is known and appreciated for its independence and flexibility. Because it relies on a spectrum of sponsors rather than a more narrowly constituted membership, CLIR can respond to change as times and conditions demand.

If it is difficult to predict how higher education and its libraries, digital resources, and scholars and their methods might be described in 10 or 15 years, there is a palpable sense that this future will be extraordinarily different than what we might have imagined a decade ago. Recent developments suggest that we are in a transitional period out of which new concepts of universities, libraries, and the scholar's working environment—e.g., resources, methodologies, and publishing models—will arise. These developments include large-scale digitization projects such as Google's and more recently Microsoft's; the florescence of projects that produce individually terabytes of information annually; the near-universal dependence on digital resources and tools, and the need to build upon and manage coherently the nation's cyberinfrastructure as evidenced by the publications on this topic by researchers in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, and the humanities; the emergence of new fields of scholarship and research, and the proliferation of interdisciplinary fields of endeavor; and the growing recognition of the complexity of preservation and its importance to all academic interests.

The areas of activity in which CLIR has engaged need to be structured as more deeply interrelated and interdependent than they have in the past. It is easier now to imagine a digital library of millions of books, images, sound recordings, and moving images, but it is also necessary to build the tools and applications that make information accessible and fully functional to students and researchers. New disciplines pose new questions and require new approaches to research and scholarship, and vast digital repositories must have an architecture that facilitates repurposing and reconstituting an unprecedented amount of data while supporting the discovery of new knowledge. Similarly, the growing awareness of preservation as a critical component of our information system underlines not only the ephemeral nature of digital representation but also its versatility: data preserved for one research program can, if properly organized and maintained, support future research projects. This conceptually renders more porous the boundaries between raw data compiled during research and the end result. New models of scholarly communication and publishing are heatedly discussed, driven in part by frustration regarding the costs and business models of traditional publishing, but also by the potential need for different models of scholarly argument and presentation that large, multimedia repositories and libraries may engender. More obviously, cross-disciplinary convergence on the issue of cyberinfrastructure indicates that researchers in nearly all fields, whether particle physics, archaeology, astronomy, or modern political history cannot remotely achieve the highest level of intellectual productivity without an investment in the networks, visualization tools, search engines, indices and databases, content management applications, and analytical tools requisite for an accessible and user-friendly virtual space.

The cross-disciplinary focus on cyberinfrastructure is both a result of a more sophisticated understanding of the next iteration of research environments and a concept that can help to shape that environment. For many years the term digital library has been used to describe increasingly complex repositories of one kind or another. Cyberinfrastructure allows us to think of a more intricate, complex, and coherently inter-working set of systems and content that transforms the idea of a digital library into a virtual work place characterized by an architecture that creates a systemic permeability that interrelates these objects and tools. In this way, cyberinfrastructure inherently fosters new discovery and a reorganization and reconstitution of the knowledge contained in such a vast system. One must consider that conducting research, whether in biomedicine or sociology, can entail searching data in text, image, and numbers simultaneously. It can require the extensive federation of once-local repositories, ontology-based database integration, the application of fundamental tools such as GIS for a variety of datasets, and fast and efficient retrieval of digital objects, which in turn requires the thoughtful use of metadata. Because the same database can be of use to scholars in different fields, search terms need to be adjustable to the semantics of each discipline. When these digital elements are effectively interworked, conditions for a new virtual environment for the comportment of research are attained.

For the foreseeable future, CLIR can augment its role as an independent source of trusted and authoritative research and a thought leader in this environment by setting out on a more encompassing and strategic path. This strategy is framed by the realization that academic research and the organizations that support it are going to be transformed in the next decade; that the facets of this environment are fundamentally interrelated, largely because of the nature of a distributed digital "campus"; and that we do not yet have the knowledge to adequately describe, analyze, build, and maintain such a radically new environment. CLIR's research agenda will be organized based on these realizations.

Each of the topics described in the pages that follow overlaps with most of the others in some fashion, and necessarily so. They are individuated to facilitate a manageable research program, but effort will always be made to articulate the interconnections of the discoveries and recommendations arising from each. Put another way, by declaring that the next generation will be immersed in and dependent upon an academic environment far more complex than we have traditionally acknowledged, and that there is a profound urgency in analyzing and providing extensible and scalable solutions to develop this environment to support and facilitate the highest level of scholarly productivity, CLIR will embark on a multifaceted research agenda that:

• rigorously defines the base technologies of computation and communication, the software programs, and the data curation and preservation programs that are national in scale and are requisite for the management of very large-scale multimedia datasets, particularly pertaining to the digital record of our cultural heritage (Cyberinfrastructure);
• explores sustainable strategies for preserving all media, analog and traditional, and heightens public awareness of the risks of failing to plan for preservation (Preservation);
• explores and assesses new methodologies, emerging fields of inquiry, intellectual strategies involving data gathering and collaboration, and modes of communication, including sharing of research data and publishing models, that are likely to define the next generation of scholars (The Next Scholar);
• explores and articulates the increasingly swift evolution of the concept of the library with particular focus on its core functions and the possible consequences for staffing, research and teaching, and economic modeling (The Emerging Library);
• investigates and defines the skills and expertise needed to best administer, inspire, and inform the next generation (Leadership); and
• extrapolates from an array of CLIR's findings and other related research how academic organizations, institutions, behaviors, and culture may evolve (New Models).

Ours is a community of knowledge, though in recent years it has proven difficult to comport ourselves as a community that addresses major challenges in a strategic way, employing effectively the many areas of expertise that are requisite to solve our problems. To bring this knowledge to bear upon the most pressing challenges of our era, leadership, motivation, and original research that provokes new insight are needed. CLIR has a unique opportunity to define and structure the future we most desire. Not since the invention of the printing press in the late middle ages have we seen such rapid evolution in the system of scholarly communication. CLIR can quickly be reconceived as an integral and indispensable voice in this period of fundamental change.

While much of the agenda of CLIR is focused upon higher education, in the end the desired result of this activity is to contribute in profound and fundamental ways to the public good. As recent publications have noted, the new networks and the vast, federated digital resources currently envisioned will have a democratizing effect across this nation and across the globe. With our collective cultural heritage made accessible, everyone, from the very young to the very old, will benefit. In a time so desperately in need of historical context and thoughtful understanding of the other, the role of CLIR as an agent that promulgates a new and vigorous understanding of the public good in a digital era, and its attendant responsibilities, is assumed as an integral and guiding element of our mission.

PROGRAM DIRECTIONS

Cyberinfrastructure

A 2003 National Science Foundation (NSF) report on cyberinfrastructure for the sciences and engineering defines cyberinfrastructure (CI) as "a layer of enabling hardware, algorithms, software, communications, institutions, and personnel" that lies between a layer of "base technologies" composed of the "electro-optical components of computation, storage, and communication" and a layer of software programs, data, information, and "social practices applicable to specific projects, disciplines, and communities."[1] The publication of this report and two subsequent major documents on CI representing the social sciences and the humanities[2] represents an extraordinary shared vision of a new environment necessary for intellectual productivity and innovation in nearly all academic fields of research and teaching. It is an equally interesting testimony to the dependence on a robust and sustainable cyberinfrastructure for scholarship and research to progress or, in some instances, to survive. CLIR has an opportunity to provide leadership and structure to this pervasive phenomenon, especially working with the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.

In pursuing this area of focus, CLIR will partner with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Sciences Research Council, and work with the Office for Cyberinfrastructure at NSF, the Association of Research Libraries, the National Academies, and international agencies such as JISC. CLIR will also explore joint funding opportunities with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Mellon Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation as more specific research opportunities are identified.

In addition, CLIR will engage at a deep and substantive level with DLF Aquifer, which is a test bed for the creation of tools and services that allow an interoperable, more functional shared digital environment for scholars, and other collective efforts over time that extend, enrich, and further enable the results of Aquifer.

Next steps for CLIR

For 2007:

1. Hold a cross-disciplinary retreat. With ACLS and NSF, CLIR will cosponsor a retreat that brings together scientists and humanists to discuss the areas in which problems and challenges are shared. Participants will be charged to identify areas and to make recommendations for a strategic response to these challenges.

2. Discuss CI report with publishers. Arrange a meeting of humanities acquisition editors (those working on selecting scholarly books as well as journal editors) to explore new models of scholarly publication that utilizes a robust and well- maintained cyberinfrastructure, with particular attention to increased porosity between archives, the execution of research, and publication. A publication or series of publications will come form these meetings.

3. Develop message for policy makers. Working closely with ACLS, sponsor and promote ongoing meetings, hearings, a forum and other means of communicating the issues and implications of a national effort to build a robust CI message that will reach Congress and the public that explains the investment in CI as a major contribution to the public good. Modeling and testing business models that yield data proving the economic benefits to the nation of such an investment (productivity, competitive advantages) should be undertaken as a way to interest Congress in making a public investment to get things started.

For 2008-2009:

4. Examine potential for CI to spawn new businesses. Identify existing and new commercial businesses that could support the various research areas in the CI report. These might include corporations focusing on data mining, text translation, large-scale archiving, large-scale digitization, semantic searches, and ontological search engines. CLIR will work with other organizations, such as the NCSA, in this effort.

5. Conduct benchmarking studies on CI users. Benchmark where CI users are today and articulate what they think they need in both the short and long term. Workshops with representative scholars of selected professional societies will be convened to determine what research projects that use new technologies and digital resources are considered most promising. CLIR will encourage some of the societies to develop Web-accessible inventories of these projects, and the tools and standards they employ.

6. Examine potential of CI for teaching. Commission original research reports on the importance of CI for improving instruction, which the Cybercommission report does not address. This would offer an opportunity for more programmatic collaboration with Educause.

7. Explore collaboratories. Inaugurate a project that looks more rigorously into collaboratory environments, by discipline or research group, that utilize cyberinfrastructure in order to capture characteristics of collaboratories and investigate how information resources/tools/expertise could be more widely incorporated profitably.

Preservation

Preserving the human record is essential to scholarship and society, and is central to CLIR's agenda. The technologies that are revolutionizing scholarly communication present new challenges to ensuring the longevity of digital scholarship. These challenges are compounded by the continued need to safeguard analog materials, including fragile audio and visual recordings that document the twentieth century. Two expert groups convened by CLIR in 2006 confirmed that the needs in preservation are great, including the need for a strong "national voice" to focus public attention on the risks that face our scholarly and cultural record, and the need for a more coherent and broadly communicated national strategy for preservation. Both groups concluded that CLIR is well positioned to address these needs.

The groups asked CLIR to serve as a public advocate for the preservation and stewardship of all formats across a broad spectrum of cultural heritage institutions and through the entire life cycle of the materials, including the period before materials become part of an institution's collections. They also asked CLIR to map the preservation landscape, analyze gaps, and then help address those gaps by tackling some issues itself, but also by convening, facilitating, and communicating the work of others.

Next Steps for CLIR

For 2007:

1. Develop a public awareness campaign. CLIR will advocate for preservation of all formats, digital and traditional, across a spectrum of cultural heritage institutions, including libraries, archives, historical societies, and museums. CLIR will explore the use of new media to convey this message. In the 1980s, the Commission on Preservation and Access raised public awareness of the brittle books problem through release of the film "Slow Fires." Such a campaign in the early 21^st century might include interactive media, e.g., a video game, with accompanying material of a less interactive nature for more traditional audiences.

In conjunction with this activity, CLIR will expand its connections with the most important and influential media, here and abroad. It will explore with other associations, nationally and internationally, the best ways to leverage concern for preservation to the global information community.

2. Create a preservation map. There is no single source of information about the preservation efforts being undertaken nationwide. Consequently, there is considerable duplication of, and gaps in, preservation efforts. A map of the preservation landscape could help identify gaps and redundancies and provide a basis from which they could be monitored and addressed. The map would not be exhaustive, but would include major areas of activity and initiatives. It would likely be organized by types of preservation activity rather than by geography; however, it is possible that a multi-layered, interlinked map could be created, with each layer providing a different display of preservation data (e.g., geography, funding source, amount). The map would be updated regularly and available online. In developing the map, CLIR would aim to work with other organizations that have monitored preservation efforts in recent years, working initially with CoOL, and perhaps augmenting the work of CoOL and providing a means to sustain and expand upon this effort over the longer term.

In conjunction with the mapping activity, CLIR will:

• Review CLIR's 2002 Kenney-Stam report, The State of Preservation Programs in American College and Research Libraries, for currency and adequacy, and decide whether and where periodic follow-up reporting is appropriate;

• Determine how CLIR can best inform the library and institutional community of the broad range of projects being created by the Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP);

• Create a current-awareness alert service, perhaps a CLIR blog, to facilitate communication and awareness of preservation developments.

3. Examine impacts of mass digitization. There is rapidly growing concern about the impact of mass digitization projects on preservation. For example:

• Mass digitization projects, including Google's, are generally not being done to preservation standards, which were painstakingly developed by the cultural heritage community. In what cases are preservation standards not being applied? Why not? How much (or to what standard) is good enough? Do we need to re-evaluate our standards and guidelines? What are some emerging methodologies that are more difficult to discover (e.g., those methods that are often off limits because of proprietary or confidential arrangement?) How might these emerging methodologies be brought into public purview without violating special agreements?

• Some institutions are having trouble ingesting the volume of files generated by mass digitization. Consequently, some are receiving files that, in addition to falling short of preservation standards, are also stored with lossy compression. Are there underlying issues with which CLIR or other institutions could help?

• What responsibility is being taken for masters, e.g., Registry of Digital Masters?

• How will digitization affect originals, including their use? What impact will mass digitization projects have on unique materials?

CLIR will commission a study of these impacts in 2007, and will follow up with a meeting of major players soon after the paper's distribution.

4. Help create preservation tools for management. CLIR will partner with appropriate organizations to produce and distribute preservation information appropriate to various levels and types of library staff. For example, managers who are aware of preservation issues can do a great deal to improve the situation at their institutions. With proper training, such managers could adapt workflows, know how to assess future costs of preservation, or consider preservation needs when contributing to plans for building renovations. CLIR will convene a small team to discuss and design appropriate training and leadership development models for preservation.

5. Advance preservation initiatives. CLIR is positioned to collaborate with other institutions to advance preservation initiatives in several areas including, but not limited to: establishing centers for digital conversion as a means of preserving the content of deteriorating audio and video tapes, working through issues surrounding print repositories, and developing and implementing a preservation research agenda.

The Next Scholar

This area of focus explores rigorously some of the transformational aspects of disciplinary methodologies, changing pedagogies, and alternate and evolving behaviors of researchers across many disciplines to gain a more accurate understanding of the support services, infrastructure, programs, and expertise necessary to advance scholarship and intellectual productivity in the coming decade. This exploration will articulate a user-centric perspective that is essential for such purposes as developing a robust and effective CI, training the next generation of library and other academic leaders, and suggesting new models of business for libraries and universities.

CLIR will coordinate its efforts in this area with scholarly societies, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Research Libraries, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and related efforts under way at The College of London, Stanford University School of Engineering, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Australia (the Research Quality Framework), among others.

Next Steps for CLIR

For 2007:

1. Re-engage with Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI). An annual meeting of faculty and librarians hosted by the University of Virginia, the SCI is a rare medium from which the evolution of selected disciplines and their scholarly methods can be extrapolated. CLIR's previous involvement with the SCI provided an opportunity to meet and work with faculty in a variety of disciplines. The fairly brief but intensive meetings have consistently uncovered many issues and complexities that would otherwise remain speculative. CLIR could assist with follow-up to these meetings, working with the faculty to plan for and on occasion provide the technical and support structures to carry out projects and means that further promulgate the discoveries of the various SCI meetings, respond to some of the challenges identified at the meetings, and build strong networks of communication among other faculty practitioners. CLIR can also assist with ongoing assessments of past SCIs. This effort will correlate closely with activities pertaining to Emerging Disciplines.

2. Examine user behavior. Understanding how users conduct their research and what they need is critical to planning the infrastructure and services that will support the next scholar. To this end, CLIR will undertake a series of workshops on faculty and student research behavior and a survey of user studies.

In February 2007, CLIR will mount the first of its workshops, which will focus on faculty research behavior. The workshop leader, an anthropologist, will teach participants from seven liberal arts colleges the importance of understanding such behavior and its implications for the library. Participants will observe and conduct interviews with faculty in the humanities to find out how instructors locate and organize materials to use in class or assign to students, including electronic texts as well as video, images, and materials found through databases and other such services, and how faculty members assemble those materials, how long they search, what they do if they cannot locate what they want or if it is difficult to access or too expensive to use, and where they seek help.

CLIR will also publish some of the significant user studies that have been recently done, and perhaps commission a survey of user studies, which could include an analytic inventory or synthesis that would relate these efforts to one another, going beyond mere summary of the findings.

3. Commission studies and analysis on the evolving state of scholarly communication.

CLIR will commission a series of studies on changes in scholarly communication to help clarify and define working parameters and agendas for libraries at many levels. Such studies might include expert committee reports on the following:

¤ Issues related to the scholarly monographic publication. There is a widespread assumption that the scholarly monograph is in crisis. Can this assumption be quantified, verified, or nuanced? CLIR might partner with the American Association of University Professors on this inquiry.

¤ The speed of movement from paper-plus-electronic environment to an electronic-only environment (especially for scholarly journals) in some academic fields. What are the issues? How and when will they be resolved? Can we develop experiments to test this shift and help it happen in a more orderly way?

¤ How do libraries come into contact with and work through issues such as copyright, licensing, and contracting with the legal counsel of their institutions? A related issue is security: use of some online environments, such as Second Life, may violate federal laws pertaining to personal privacy and security, yet scholars increasingly want to work in such environments as subject of their research.

CLIR will also commission quantitative analyses in selected areas. One such analysis might compare the perception of money flow with the perception of value received in the scholarly publishing economy. The study would explore perceptions about value-adding, to learn what each stakeholder thinks about the others' contributions, to establish the resources necessary to procure the value-added, and to generate a framework for further studies about the cost-benefits of published journal scholarship.

Another facet of this agenda topic is an assessment of open access economic models. This is particularly germane to the production/dissemination/preservation of conference proceedings, an area of interest to disciplines ranging from computer science to linguistics.

Finally, CLIR will consider in-house or single-source projects that include revising LIBLICENSE; contracting to assess and upgrade the NewJour alerting project and service; and establishing a CLIRinghouse project and Web site to document current initiatives of professional groups, societies, academic institutions, and others in the area of scholarly communication.

For 2008-2009:

4. Explore emerging disciplines. Emerging disciplines can represent the early stages of important methodological shifts within scholarly fields of study. They can be construed as evidence of an interdisciplinary flowering, or understood as a dead-end of a traditional area of study. Sometimes, a combination of all of these descriptive labels is evident. CLIR will convene a series of meetings with scholars who represent potentially new areas of research to address the following questions:

• What new questions or challenges occurred to spur the development of a new sub-field?
• What aspects of core disciplines were appropriated to respond to these challenges?
• What modifications in traditional methodologies have taken place because of the new subfield?
• What has been the effect on the relevant core disciplines of the new subfields?
• What technologies have been most productive in establishing the subfield?
• What are current research projects, and what are possible future research projects?
• What resources (library, IT infrastructure) are requisite to support the new subfield?

Academic Culture

• Who took the lead in bringing the subfield to fruition? What were the academic circumstances that facilitated this? Why does it flourish at one set of institutions but not in others?
• What new courses has the subfield generated?
• How are students recruited in this new area of study?
• Does the new field challenge current tenure and promotion practices?

Organizational Models

• How might the new subfield influence the current departmental/school model of university organization?
• How does the new subfield integrate into traditional scholarly societies?
• What traditional and new methods of publication has the new subfield adopted?
• What new methods of knowledge organization does the new area of study entail?

Sustainability

• What funding agencies have given grants for this new area of research?
• What are the longer-term prospects for sustainability of the new subfield?

CLIR will publish proceedings of these meetings, which could lead to future symposia and workshops.

5. Support use of the artifact. Despite researchers' growing use of technology and digital surrogates, the artifact will retain its importance for future scholars, especially those in the humanities. In fact, evidence suggests that the availability of digital surrogates increases demand for the original artifact.

Despite the importance of original sources, younger scholars typically have limited experience in how to develop knowledge from them. To encourage early exposure to rich collections of original sources, CLIR, with Mellon support, administers the Mellon Fellowship Program for Dissertation Research in Original Sources. In addition to providing funds without which visits to relevant archives might be impossible, fellows deepen their understanding of how archival repositories are organized; how research materials are evaluated, acquired, preserved, and processed for use; how to use a range of finding aids; and how to develop creative skill in pursuing sources of use in a range of record groups and types of materials that may not seem initially of prime relevance. After the end of each fellow's tenure in a research repository, the student provides CLIR with a written analysis of their experience, including obstacles encountered, research lessons learned, and how libraries and archives could make better decisions about materials to acquire, preserve, publicize, and even digitize for meeting scholars' real needs. CLIR will aggregate and disseminate these findings annually.

CLIR will also commission a series of case studies that examine how digital surrogates are drawing people back to the original and changing methods of inquiry. For example, CLIR might invite Martin Foys, of Hood College, to write about how the high-quality digitization of the Bayeux Tapestry has affected research on the tapestry. Not only has it enabled off-site scholars to view the tapestry as a whole (rather than in parts reproduced on book pages) it offers a panoply of functions that only begins with hyperlinked scholarly commentary on each of the 173 panels; an outline to facilitate non-linear navigation of sections of the Tapestry; and the ability to toggle between English and Latin in the inscriptions.

The Emerging Library

Libraries have been defined alternately as "diffuse" and "hybrid." Both terms attempt to capture the transmuting, multifaceted concept of the library in the digital world, often emphasizing an outward-directed, collaborative model. There have been several good studies of the changing roles of librarians, and of how traditional libraries are developing new services and repurposing their spaces to meet the new demands and expectations of students and faculty. CLIR will delve into more specific examinations of emerging libraries.

Next Steps for CLIR

In 2007:

1. Examine core functions of the research library. CLIR has commissioned consultant Abby Smith and University of Michigan Professor Paul Courant to write an essay articulating core functions that research libraries will serve in the information landscape of early twenty-first century higher education—a landscape characterized by ubiquitous, digitized, indexed online access to content. Researchers and students begin and often end their quest for information online. Results of research can be and increasingly are published without publishers. Access to these results, and to the cultural and scientific records that constitute the primary resource base for research and teaching, is narrowed by the increasingly exclusive use of licensed, rather than purchased, resources.

Among the crucial functions that the authors argue will fall to the library are:

• opening of the stacks through digital scanning and indexing to make all the contents of the library visible and discoverable;
• maintenance of the authentic, reliable, and accessible record of cultural and scientific achievement and knowledge;
• ready access to this archive through publication and other forms of dissemination;
• identification of and training in key skills necessary for professional librarians, archivists, and possibly domain-specific informaticians; and
• active leadership in changing the legal and public policy environment with respect to ownership of and access to scholarship and the sources for scholarship.

Courant and Smith will make a broadly accessible argument about the urgent need for research libraries to develop a shared strategy for the twenty-first century. They will specify key elements of that strategy and lay out a plan of action to implement it. The essay will be published in March 2007.

2. Point to or commission service framework documents. There are an increasing number of 'framework' documents being composed, (DFL Services Framework; JISC frameworks). CLIR can both point to these and also commission additional ones as the appropriate. The value of the framework approach is that as an exercise it allows participants to understand in depth the current functions of a library, and can lead to a more efficient and streamlined workplace, which in turn affects the business model. Because frameworks normally entail a breaking down of basic work components, it can assist in building software tools that better reflect the desired workflow and can be more easily and cost-effectively replicated.

Leadership

Strong leadership is necessary to realize technology's promise for scholarly communication, to foster new models of libraries and library services, and to contribute to the emerging cyberinfrastructure. Library transformation must be led by individuals who have a broad vision of the information environment, who understand and work as well with faculty members as they do library or IT staff, and who view change as opportunity. CLIR has a distinguished record of providing opportunities and fostering environments for new leaders in libraries, information technology, and academe in general. This record is exemplified by the success of the Frye Leadership Institute, which aims to develop creative leaders to guide and transform academic information services for higher education in the twenty-first century. With cosponsors EDUCAUSE and Emory University, CLIR will continue to support the Institute, now in its seventh year.

Another example of CLIR's efforts to encourage future-oriented leadership is its support for Chief Information Officers (CIO) Group. The CLIR CIO's group is composed of 34 directors of organizations that have merged their library and information technology (IT) units on the campuses of liberal arts colleges and small universities. The purpose of the group is to provide a forum in which members can discuss library and computing issues as an integrated whole. CLIR will continue to support this effort for the foreseeable future.

In November 2006, CLIR convened a meeting of leaders of mid-career library leadership training programs and library schools to discuss existing programs and the most effective models for training leaders for the 21^st century. The consensus was that while many programs are producing good leaders, they are not yielding a large enough pool to fill the number of vacancies—a situation that will only become worse as more library directors and middle managers retire.

The group's recommendations for CLIR action are summarized in points 1-3 below.

Next Steps for CLIR

For 2007:

1. Redefine information services. With the information landscape changing, there is a need to reconceptualize information services. CLIR will hold national discussions on how such services should be redefined and how librarians must rethink their approach to services. These discussions—held with libraries, library schools, schools of information, regional networks, associations, and professional associations across the information spectrum—will yield a vision for the future and how library leaders should be trained.

For 2008-2009:

2. Help create guides for recruiters and job seekers. There is no core set of principals to guide library recruiting. How do we know when someone has the right set of skills to be a library leader? Selection committees and search firms do not know what to look for when hiring a director or chief information officer. Guidance is needed to help make good hires and help those already in leadership positions tackle challenges of the library in transition. CLIR will help develop new guides, or solicit public comment on existing guides, to director positions in different types of libraries, including academic, public, medical, legal, and other kinds of special libraries.

What is the motivation for an individual to become a leader and how do we help promote that, particularly in an age where fundraising, dealing with unions, and other more mundane tasks are increasingly part of the job? CLIR will also explore the possibility of launching a self-assessment that will help people decide whether or not they have the interest and/or potential for leadership positions in libraries.

3. Advocate for investing in library leaders. What incentives do organizations have for investing in library leaders? Currently, universities make no consistent, deliberate investments to train library leaders for the future because presidents, provosts, and other leaders do not see the incentives to do so. We need to ask campus executives what their expectations are for information services, and make connections between these expectations and what will be needed to meet them. CLIR will work with major higher education associations (e.g., Council of Independent Colleges, National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, EDUCAUSE) to begin this dialog with campus leaders, with special attention on bringing together provosts, presidents, and library directors.

4. Expand Post Doctoral Fellowship Program. CLIR will continue to develop and expand its Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Scholarly Information Resources. The program is designed to give recent Ph.D. recipients in the humanities a unique opportunity to develop as information professionals and scholars. Each fellow is placed at an institution that matches his or her interest, and is given specific goals and projects. Fellows participate in the intellectual life of their institutions by working within the areas of academic librarianship; archives and archive management; special collections; curricular development; teaching and learning support (techno-pedagogy); and digital resource production and use. In addition, fellows contribute to the development of the CLIR program by participating in an intensive summer seminar; sharing work-in-progress through electronic portfolios; and meeting regularly in virtual seminars with leading figures in the fields of librarianship, the humanities, and other related areas. Previous fellows have gone on to launch careers in libraries, archives and special collections; consulting and writing; digital resource management; pedagogy support; and university faculty positions. A few have decided to pursue additional degrees in library and information sciences and/or technology.

In the coming years, CLIR will expand the criteria for acceptance into the Postdoctoral Fellowship program. Currently, graduates in the humanities are eligible to become postdoctoral fellows. The program will be widened to include recent graduates in selected fields of engineering. Many of the most complex and challenging problems facing libraries and by extension universities involve developing digital library architectures that support scholarship and promote new forms of intellectual inquiry. These challenges cannot be addressed solely by librarians, but require the expertise of engineers from a variety of disciplines relating to computer science and informatics (signal processing, data mining, compilers, search engines, relational databases, storage hierarchies). The Postdoctoral Fellowship program will begin in 2007 to solicit applications from recent graduates in selected fields of engineering.

Expanding the postdoctoral fellowship program will allow CLIR to work more closely with the National Academies and the organizations that serve deans of engineering. CLIR will also go back to IMLS to discuss ways to strengthen proposals to that agency on leadership training. There may be some industry partners interested in funding aspects of the Postdoctoral Fellowship program as it expands into areas of engineering and the computational sciences. Since these are issues that pertain to CIOs at research universities, there is an opportunity for CLIR to expand further to include the CIOs of larger research institutions to address ways to achieve a more collective advocacy and collaboration among institutions in providing means to attract and train future leaders.

New Models

In this area, the term new is used in a variety of ways: defining library and academic programs and projects, especially those overseas, that might not be known by our American constituencies, as well as potentially transformational technologies, applications, and tools; identifying recent and projected very large-scale projects meant to instigate fundamental change in areas pertinent to CLIR's research agenda (for example, the building of more than 300 universities in China; the establishment of new private universities in the EU; the defining strategy of the Biblioteca Alexandrina as an institution for cultural tolerance and scholarly communication); and original research that thoughtfully and rigorously extrapolates from these projects and programs, as well as from analyzing and synthesizing the multitude of research, programs, and special meetings that arise from the other areas of focus what the future academic environment may entail.

CLIR can, through New Models, strengthen ties to overseas institutions and establish a greater voice in developing nations, particularly China. The rationale for this is twofold. CLIR has produced a very fine corpus of research on a variety of topics pertaining to the design and development of digital libraries, as well as producing original research on issues attendant upon the transformation of traditional library constructs, including services and staff. By working closely with libraries overseas, CLIR can help to ensure that redundant efforts are not undertaken, and also promote international standards and protocols.

This is also an opportunity to create partnerships with business and industry. Google is an obvious choice, though more sophisticated technologies and programs, such as those being developed at Inxight and Radar Network, offer more interesting collaborative potential as well as outside funding for CLIR. While it goes generally unacknowledged, the scale and complexity of the challenges confronting libraries and higher education today cannot be solved by librarians and academic IT specialists alone. The expertise, interest, expertise, and funding of industrial partners is fundamentally needed if we are to secure the kind of research environment presently envisioned.

Next Steps for CLIR

For 2007:

1. Survey new research, projects, and technologies. CLIR will develop an ongoing series of Web-based publications that highlight succinctly new research, projects, and technologies that have significant potential to affect the concept and development of universities, libraries, and other scholarly institutions. Examples might include W3, cognitive searching, large-scale digital architecture, and more dynamic publication models.

For 2008-2009:

2. Assess implications of developments. CLIR will convene symposia and workshops focused on some of these new and emerging phenomena to discuss the implications for higher education and information management.

3. Commission research on new models. Contract original research that, while somewhat speculative, also rigorously explores new models of libraries, universities, and knowledge organization, and the relationship of these models to scholarship and teaching.

Charles Henry

President

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[1] Revolutionizing Science and Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure. Report of the National Science Foundation Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. 2003. Available at http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/.

[2] F. Berman and H. Brady. 2005. Final Report: NSF SBE-CISE Workshop on Cyberinfrastructure and the Social Sciences. Available at http://vis.sdsc.edu/sbe/reports/SBE-CISE-FINAL.pdf. Also, Our Cultural Commonwealth: The Final Report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Draft available at http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/acls.ci.report.pdf