Charlie Rapple, Kudos, and Colleen Campbell, Max Planck Digital Library
26 October 201
With the downward slide of stock markets around the world this week, many are likely bracing for impact and wondering whether the coming year will bring new budget cuts, further currency devaluation, or even staff reductions. Virtually every one of us working in the knowledge community has had to cope with the challenge of having to “do more with less” at some point in the past decade, but when those challenges persist over a prolonged period of time, it is difficult to stay resilient. And yet, a fresh outlook is sometimes all it takes to find the best way forward or even discover a hidden path that leads to unexpected gains.
A fresh outlook to stimulate innovative approaches to some of the most pressing issues that information professionals are facing today is precisely what this year’s UKSG One-Day Conference has been designed to offer. Featuring speakers from a broad range of backgrounds with unique and expert insights on “doing more with less”, the One-Day Conference will inspire delegates with new ideas for tackling their strategic and operational challenges related to budget restrictions, open access strategies, staff recruitment and training, meeting and exceeding user expectations, leveraging new technologies, and more.
You know the pain of subscription reviews and having to ask academic staff at your institution what titles they can do without? Now imagine what it would be like to prepare a national consortium of institutions for cancellation of the entire Elsevier portfolio, as the publisher was not able to present a licence model that met the demands of the consortium in the context of transitioning from a subscription-based to an open access publishing system. Wilhelm Widmark, University Librarian of Stockholm University and Chair of the Bibsam Consortium, will open the conference, sharing insights from the high-stakes negotiations in Sweden and methodologies for getting more (open) access with less subscriptions.
Nervous about what impact student numbers will have on your budget? Then just imagine what you can learn from Hardy Maritz, Group Finance Director at the University of CapeTown, who works closely with Universities South Africa via the USAf Finance Executives’ Forum. The student fees crisis has been ongoing in South Africa for roughly 15 years now, with higher education being underfunded due to declining government subsidies, and Hardy has successfully steered through the challenging times gaining expertise in financial modelling of all aspects of university revenues and expenditures. His insights will be invaluable to leaders and decision makers in the academic domain.
And what about managing at an operational level under significant financial pressure? Mac-Anthony Cobblah, Library Director of the University of Cape Coast in Ghana and Chairman of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH) licensing committee, will share the innovative ways his own institution and others in Africa are coping with technological changes, the increasingly complex expectations of library users, high operational costs and the drastic reduction in the budget allocation.
But “doing more with less” has resonance in so many other spheres of our work – from new product and service development to technology – and the conference line up is rich with experts with ideas and innovations that delegates will be able to put into practice immediately. What might libraries who are looking to develop new services learn from the product development practices of publishers, for example? Razvancatalin Telitoiu, Product Manager at SAGE Publishing, will introduce the Lean Canvas methodology they use to test new ideas. And in terms of technologies to put users in touch with more content even when subscribing or purchasing less content, registered delegate Joanna Ball, Head of Library Content Delivery and Digital Strategy at the University of Sussex Library, suggests,
“As the proportion of content which is openly available increases, it’s becoming more important for libraries to ensure that they prioritise discovery of open content for their users through their discovery systems, so I look forward to hearing what Christine Stohn, Senior Discovery and Delivery Product Manager at Ex Libris, has to say about this.”
These are just some of the fresh ideas featured in the One-Day Conference that will help you tackle tough decisions while still adding value and minimising disruption. Helle Lauridsen, of Helle Lauridsen Consult, reminds us,
"Cut backs are not always a bad thing. They force you to think differently, and really focus on why you are there and how you can serve your constituents in a different and more creative way."
A world of insights and inspiration packed into a single day (and a drinks reception for networking), the UKSG One-Day Conference is not to be missed!