Library in Transition

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The Future of Libraries

Kahle, Prelinger et al

The INKE group is comprised of researchers and stakeholders at the forefront of computing in the humanities, text analysis, information studies, usability and interface design. The network is led by Canadian scholars, but includes members from the USA and the UK. It is comprised of those who are best-poised to understand the nature of the human record as it intersects with the computer. Our work is divided into four key research groupings: textual studies, user experience, interface design, and information management.

An examination of the literature published about electronic books (e-books) between 2000-2007 helps to determine the factors that may have influenced academic e-book offerings and the adoption of e-books in academic libraries. The literature reflects e-book concepts and offerings dating back to 1945, as well as studies and perceptions of opportunities and challenges related to e-books. In an attempt to explain why the integration of e-books into academic library collections has been very gradual during this period, this article presents a summary of the literature that addresses issues related to electronic versions of books that are made accessible online. This includes both books that are digitized and born digital.

As digital libraries move from demonstration projects to the real world of working libraries, it is critical to assess and to document the impact of the shift. This paper reports the methodology and initial results of an Institute for Library and Information Studies (IMLS) funded research study of the operational and economic impact of an academic library's migration to an all-electronic journal collection. Drexel Library's entire print and electronic journal collections and associated staff are the test bed to study three key research questions: (1) What is the impact on library staffing needs? (2) How have library costs been reduced, increased and/or re-allocated? (3) What other library resources have been affected? We are using quantitative and qualitative methods to answer the research questions operationalized in the following tasks: (1) Measure the staff time, subscriptions costs and other costs related to each activity required to acquire and maintain print and electronic journals. (2) Compute the per-volume, per-title, and per-use costs of acquiring and maintaining print and electronic subscriptions. (3) Study all impacted library services, including changes in reference service, document delivery, and instructional programs. Initial results of measuring staff time indicate Information Services and Systems Operation departments constitute the majority of personnel costs for electronic journals. Technical Services and Circulation account for the majority of staff costs for print journals. Per title subscription costs appear to be substantially lower for electronic titles obtained through aggregator collections.

The Shift Away From Print By Eileen Gifford Fenton and Roger C. Schonfeld For most scholarly journals, the transition away from the print format and to an exclusive reliance on the electronic version seems all but inevitable, driven by user preferences for electronic journals and concerns about collecting the same information in two formats. But this shift away from print, in the absence of strategic planning by a higher proportion of libraries and publishers, may endanger the viability of certain journals and even the journal literature more broadly - while not even reducing costs in the ways that have long been assumed.