Scholars, Scholarship and the Scholarly Enterprise in the Digital Age

DET/CHENovember 29, 2011

San Francisco, California

Richard N. Katz

PUBLICATIONS

Restoration of the North Pacific Coast Locomotive No. 12, SONOMA, (California State Railroad Museum Technical Paper No. 1, 1978).

The Legal Struggle to Abolish the House UnAmerican Activities Committee: Papers of Jeremiah Gutman. (Meiklejohn Press, 1980).

The National Lawyers Guild: An Inventory of Records and Index to Periodicals. (Meiklejohn Press, 1981). Committed To Excellence in Records Management. Joint Authorship with Richard P. West. (The Office, 1986).

The Academic Computing Environment. (Directors of Educational Technology/California Higher Education, 1990).

Implementing the Vision: A Framework and Agenda for Investing in Academic Computing. Joint authorship with Richard P. West. (EDUCOM Review, 1990).

Sustaining Excellence in the 21st Century: A Vision And Strategies For College And University Administration. Joint authorship with Richard P. West. (CAUSE Professional Paper, 1992).

The Impact of Automation on our Corporate Memory. Joint authorship with Victoria A. Davis, in Corporate Archives and History. (Krieger, 1992).

Academic Information Management at the Crossroads: Time Again To Review the Economics. (Serials Review, 1992).

Street Cred

The Digital Age, Part 1

Digital Age, Part 2 Real Disruption

• Sharp decline in newspaper revenues

• No online business model

• No one under 30 years old reads paper newspapers

• ≠ the end of news or the end of news reporting

The Digital Age, Part 2

“We are today as far into

the electric age as the

Elizabethans had

advanced into the

Typographical Age.”

Marshall McLuhan, 1962,

The Gutenberg Galaxy

… The past dissolves before the future resolves.”

Tool or Torrent?

The Scholar

A Renaissance

• Connected• Empowered• Enlarged

communities• Less busy-ness• Efficient

Busy-ness and the Life of Scholar

Ending theBusy-ness of Scholarship

• Discover• Retrieve• Assess• Annotate• Tag• Index• Store• In digital form 7x24x365

Dr. Ron YanoskyEDUCAUSE Center

for Applied Research

Liberation of the Scholar

• Optical fiber to the home

• Wall size plasma display

• From the Kuyper Belt to your home

• World class science, loads of public service and time for the kids!

Heidi Hammel,Space Sciences Institute

Scholarship

Marie Curie

Research Teaching

Application Integration

Pre Digital Age Scholarly Communications

Scholarly Communications in the Digital Age

Optiportal, UC San Diego and University of Melbourne

Liberation of Scholarship

Liberation of Scholarly Resources

Hubble Telescope

Palomar 200 inch telescope, 1948

Scholarly Enterprise

• Declining engagement• Empty lecture theatres• Dwindling tutorials• Rising Costs• Continued low participation by key

minorities in U.S.

Enterprise: Growth of For Profits2005 2010

Institutions    

--Number of public institutions 1,738 1,705--Percentage of all institutions that are public 39.6% 36.8%

--Number of private, nonprofit institutions 1,745 1,713

--Percentage of all institutions that are private 39.7% 37.0%

--Number of for-profit institutions 909 1,215--Percentage of all institutions that are for-profit 20.7% 26.2%

Enrollments    --Public institutions total 13,085,114 14,909,531

--Public institutions as a percentage of all students 74.5% 71.9%

--Private, nonprofit total 3,589,454 3,924,278

--Private, nonprofit as a percentage of all students 20.4% 18.9%

--For-profit total 899.896 1,893,712

--For-profit as a percentage of all students 5.1% 9.1%

Source: Inside Higher Education, January 18, 2011

1999 2009

Scholarly Enterprise:Rise of the Edupunks

Jim Groom, with permission

Issues

Data Deluge and the Curation of Knowledge

• Public good or private good?

• Who will preserve data for how long?

• IP rights management

• Privacy and access controls

ISSUES

Scholarly Discourse: Tome, or Tweet?

ISSUES

Scholarly Isolation, Fragmentation and the Shifting Locus of Scholarly Authority

• Scholarly isolation• Fragmentation of the

scholarly landscape• Continued decline of

the campus connection• Balkanization of ideas• Rising Incivility

ISSUES

Crowd Sourcing and theRise of Truthiness

Truthiness:

“The quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be

true, rather than the facts.” ISSUES

Peer review by plebescite?

Shifting standards of scholarlyassessment

What Must We Do?

Standards Incentives

Operating Philosophy

Flexible Delivery System

Network of Partners

Summing Up• Educational Technology is Better!

– Enabling and Disrupting• Transformational Change is

Possible, even Likely• Others will Make Change, too,

Making our Task Urgent• There will be Giants and Minnows

– Institutions that are Guided by Strong Vision and Strategy will Prosper

• Scholarship will Adapt (and prosper)• This Community must help our

Institutions Adapt!

The Future?

• Shifting Societal Needs• A Real and a Virtual Footprint• S/he with the Best Metaphor Wins• Strategies for Giants and Minnows• Scholarship will Adapt (and prosper)• The Big Challenges Relate to Purpose and

Will• Our Values Continue to Matter – More than

Ever