Library in Transition

"at MPOW we are building a new library. So I'm thinking a LOT about several different time horizons. How do I plan for the realities of opening a new library in 2-3 years, but still allow for what I see as the likely outcomes for collections, services, and such in 5, or 10, or 20 years? This is a non-trivial problem…while no one can really tell whats coming, we have to remember that we are creating the future every day."

All of this isn't to say I'm pessimistic about the future of libraries. It really doesn't matter if we stop providing content in the same way. It might be the best thing to happen to public libraries. Yes, there will be some access equality issues that need sorting, but if we don't have to concern ourselves with making sure people have access to content we'll have more time to create excellent programs and experiences based around content and conversation.

Newspapers are closing left and right, as the model for sharing news and information has changed. This blog entry discusses the publishing revolution in terms of what is happening in the newspaper industry.

"What about the books, you say? In addition to an array of flat screens, Fresno State librarian Peter McDonald said the library includes the largest single floor public-access compact shelving unit in the world (according to Space Saver), capable of holding over 1.3 million volumes on one floor. The library currently has about 915,000 there, so there's room to grow. Periodicals are housed on the library's second floor."

This is a nice homepage for the A.T. Still University Learning Resource Center. Online Tutorials for electronic resources are prominently listed on the home page

Link to PLANETS "Report of Usage models for Libraries, Archives, and Data Centres." This report is a .pdf document that discusses the results of a study or user requirements for digital documents. The study discusses the following topics as they relate to digital documents: access, trustworthiness, retrieval, and flexibility.

2004 Dan Greenstein article; "Data collected recently by UC libraries suggest that where information is available in both print and digital formats, faculty and students prefer digital by an order of magnitude" Move to digital: savings in storage. Shared print collections.

Brantley on rationale for libraries in digital age. Key question: "What issues would cause this institution - the Library - to be created today?" Innovative thinkers weigh in. Role of IT, avoiding replication.

1996 book about technology in library

Subject search of Academic libraries Automation yields many relevant books about transition from print to digital

THis is a list of legal information resources published by West Publishing. 994 titles are books, and 783 are CD-Rom, with pricing information clearly marked for most of the products.

Reports on pilot to use ebooks (Sony Readers) at Northwest Missouri State U. Students found it frustrating that they couldn't "highlight passages, cut and paste text, or participate in interactive quizzes."

This is a statistical sample size calculator that can be used to try to determine the sample size needed for our study. For example, if we decide to use a library with 2,000,000 titles as the basis for our study, and we want a confidence interval of 2 (meaning we are fairly sure that a title we choose would be included in the included) our sample size should be 2398. A lower number for the confidence interval increases the sample size, and a higher number for the confidence interval decreases the sample size.

2006 San Jose State University study discussing the preferences of print vs. electronic resources in the university's library. Different disciplines prefer different formats. Access the full article through ScienceDirect.

Another article that can be accessed in full through Science Direct. This article outlines discussions from the 2008 presentation at the NETSL conference. Not an article per se, but perhaps a source for topics to explore and people to interview.

This is a summary of a presentation given 2008 American Library Association Preconference was sponsored by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Continuing Resources Section Education Committee and was moderated by Susan Davis (University at Buffalo, State University of New York). The panel discussion includes many different electronic resource topics, including pricing, cataloging and management of electronic resources.

This is a fairly extensive study detailing "E-science". There is a section devoted to managing e-science resources in the library, including the architecture of the "Fedora" system, and "E-Curator: 3D colour scans for remote object identification and assessment."