The Charleston Observatory: a position paper
By David Nicholas (University College London)
Please send comments to Katina Strauch. Thanks.

The general idea
The Charleston Conference is renowned for the quality and currency of its proceedings and debates, as well as for the eminence of its speakers and delegates. The Proceedings provide a partial legacy and testament to this but we can and must do more to take further the new/big ideas and great challenges raised; in other words to enhance the Conference’s ability to assist the information and publishing professions in their development. Currently there is no mechanism by which the exciting ideas and challenges raised can be tested or researched further and the results reported back to Conference to ensure build, continuity and dialogue. This position paper puts forward a mechanism by which this can be done – the Charleston Observatory. The Observatory would be the research adjunct for the Conference, the medium by which the ideas generated are turned into robust research projects, which provide the evidence base for strategic planning. The Observatory would be a place where information experiments can be undertaken and witnessed, where evidence can be collected in a robust and validated manner and where diverse communities can come together and share their data to the benefit of all. The Observatory would promote international research collaboration, global problems require global solutions.

The mechanics
To kick start the process (and proof the concept) we might start with topics which seem to obtain universal interest from the publishing, academic and library communities: a) the information seeking habits of the young (undergraduates) or future researchers (The Google Generation); b) the impact of e-books on the scholarly community. In following years we can ask conference to suggest or vote on topics. We would seek two types of partners (or sponsors) to take part in observatory experiments – library communities who would be willing to contribute data and take part in live research studies and research funders who would provide the necessary resources to enable the projects to be undertaken, these funders would probably come from the commercial sector - information service providers, aggregators, publishers etc. and would have some interest in the topic being funded.

The idea is that we would canvass the community to see what level of interest and co-operation the idea receives and depending on what we get back set up a group that would establish the Observatory and oversee its activities.