Adapt & Adopt: responding to new challenges in the age of Library 2.0

Changes in the business side
1. Cost shifts: Publishers and librarians have both shifted from physical to electronic models in publishing, delivery, storage, processing, maintenance

• Staffing shift from "checking in" to "checking up" -- workflow moves from physical maintenance to troubleshooting and and testing.
• For example, our libraries have moved from $14k in print to subscriptions to $4k. Print journals rarely even make it to the shelf; they go straight to the warehouse and can be retrieved upon request if the print copy is needed.

2. Fair pricing models: getting the most bang for your buck

• Considerations include site licensing, seat numbers, consortial bundling, multiple users, remote access...
• Ownership vs. access model: how can me maintain access to electronic resources we have paid for?
• ILL licensing arrangements: providers want to limit rights, limit e-delivery of articles. We are often forced to print out and scan back in to deliver elsewhere.

3. The BIG DEAL: is it a good one?

• NY is pursuing perhaps too many paths to access at the state level.
• Politcal issues often grow tricky when related to package deals
• Deal often force you to take items you don't want.

4. Bundling & Unbundling

• Bundling makes it hard to ensure consistent access to core items and keep track of what content is entering or leaving the bundle
• Some publishers are pulling out of bundles to go solo and sell independently
• "Exclusive" deals and author permissions effect content and costs

5. Open Access & the non-profit movement:

• Staff must invest time to keep track and index them
• Can we rely on the content? WIll it stick around?

6. Questions about the future

• Will multiple formats converge?

Library type often drives decision making in the print vs. electronic debate. While a large research institution will typically want to maintain a solid archive of electronic resources, small community colleges are much more concerned with providing the most access @ the least amount of money.

Library 2.0: Ramifications for Collection Development

- Academic libraries are much slower to respond than public and school libraries
- 2.0 networking, tools such as RSS feeds and blog review sites provide collection development librarians with an updated way to keep current with literature

1. On-Demand provision: document delivery, automatic purchasing, catalog population

• Parameters: how is the library-vendor relationship? What are turn-around times and budgetary restrictions?
• Mediation vs. non-mediation: ILL, circulation, etc are automated. Should purchasing go this route, as an automated curricular-based "automatic buy" list? Some libraries automatically purchase items requested through ILL.
• What level of review/approval is required for this? How involved will subject specialista and their administrators be involved?
• Trust is based on solid criteria, role assingments in decision-making actions
• KEY ISSUES:
  
• Availability vs. cost controls
• We must balance just in case with just in time collection development
• Archival maintenance: in library or publisher's hands

2. Social tagging: the grandchild of faceted cataloging

• Pros
• User needs as central
• useful, relevant, transparent, and user-friendly compared to typical catalogs in use
• Cons
• Current systems may not support customization
• If left unmediated, the lack of controlled vocabularywill lead to confusion and decreased usefulness
• The bottom line: We need to maintain a balance by permitting user participation, but mediating it to mitigate negatives.
  
• Perhaps the best method is to support a system that allows users to tag for their own use, without imposing their tags on the public catalog.

3. Archives and repositories

• Issues of manpower to keep track of e-books, serials and preservation, upkeep costs.
  
• Loss of browsability
• Users may find browsing loss acceptable if title page/table of contents are available electronicially. However, this grows costs of book scanning.
• Archive availability: How long will vendors keep archives available? Will archives disappear with cost-cutting measures?

4. Other key issues in information provision

• Fiscal constraints
• Self-imposed restraints (we would rather use IP authentitcation, not a login/password model for remote access to reduce need for tech support)
• Federated searches can provide a single interface to search multiple resources, but have limitations b/c each database uses different search vocabulary
• What do users see as the best interface for finding information electronically?

Summing up

• The future: Will we still be building a physical collection in the future?
• Content vs. services
• Permanancy is not a certainty
• Financial sustainability
  

Some Links:
Wishlist Input Form
Electronic Resources Review