From Stock to Flows, davidkremers, Kristin Antelman, Stephen Davison (California Institute of Technology)

Stock is knowledge embedded in media that have a low delta of change, whereas flows, such as cutting-edge research, have a high delta of change. Thanks to the profession’s roots in print collections, librarians associate static and stable with sustainability, and that association with solid objects was translated into early digital library architectures. This presentation describes how the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Library is moving away from stock to flows. In moving from stock to flows Caltech Library is proposing that it is, in fact, dynamic and mutable architectures that are the most viable for resilient and sustainable services.