> 2. For the past decade, usage in academic libraries has shifted from print resources and the system that support the discovery of such (i.e., library catalogs) to online subscription resources and the systems that support their discovery (i.e., databases). There have been a *lot* of new systems and improvements to the latter over the past decade, with many more improvements coming down the pipe. Things are by no means standing still.
I'm interested to know if you think this has its own dangers, as I do.
The academic library of the past that held onto books and journals had
something tangible and valuable to curate. The labored to accumulate
collections for the benefit of their students. As this shifts to being
a middleman for subscription products, I see two problems:
1. The internet cuts out middlemen and lowers management costs. There
was more curation and filtering involved when there were physical
journals. Digitization largely nixes curation costs, and filtering
costs have migrated up the stack (ie., libraries choose packages more
than individual offerings). The idea of library curation of
subscriptions persists because it resembles the former situation, but
over the long term there's no reason why the library is better at
giving you the password to something it doesn't own or control than
anyone else.
2. As the model shifts from ownership to rental, the library
increasingly becomes a rent-collector, not an independent farmer. The
library of the past could, through judicious management, accumulate
real and lasting value—the sum total of decades of judicious
collection development. With digitization, that value is only as
significant as the last check to Elsevier, and the judicious
accumulation of value for students' benefit becomes a thin
administrative layer between what the students need and what the
digital sellers want for it.
Libraries have always been "IP-licensing centers," but digitization
and the "data rental" thins out and brutalizes the model.
That's my opinion. I'm glad to hear how I'm wrong here.
Received on Tue May 05 2009 - 12:35:33 EDT