Operations, Collections and Services
E-Book, Englisch, 285 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-78063-318-3
Verlag: Elsevier Reference Monographs
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
Provides practical approach to the subjectFocuses on the challenges associated with the economic and financial aspects of digital developmentsWill be valuable to practitioners, and tutors and students in a wide variety of situations
Professor David Baker has published widely in the field of Library and Information Studies, with eighteen monographs and over 100 articles to his credit. He has spoken worldwide at numerous conferences, led workshops and seminars. His other key professional interest and expertise has been in the field of human resources, where he has also been active in major national projects.
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1 Digital economics: introduction and overview
Abstract.
Chapter 1 provides an overview of digital library economics, describing the main areas to be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters and case studies. It provides definitions of the term ‘digital library’ and a literature review of recent history and relevant works. It concludes with the key themes relating to all aspects of digital libraries: sustainability, economic models, business plans and resource allocation, and cost-effective decision-making. Keywords business plans cost-effective decision-making digital library economic models history of digital libraries resource allocation sustainability Introduction
This opening chapter aims to provide an overview of digital library economics, describing the main areas to be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters. It is complemented by Chapter 4, a résumé and critique by Derek Law of the case studies that form an integral part of the later chapters of this publication. For a fuller contextual and environmental analysis of the subject, see Digital Library Economics: An Academic Perspective (Baker and Evans, 2009), especially the first two chapters. Defining the digital library
In ‘an era of unprecedented technological innovation and evolving user expectations and information-seeking behaviour, we are arguably now an online society, with digital services increasingly common and increasingly preferred’ (Buchanan, 2010; see also Castelli, 2006). Moreover, there continues to be an exponential growth in digital content and an ever greater divergence in its provenance. There is clearly a significant role for digital libraries which, ideally, should ‘enable any citizen to access all human knowledge anytime and anywhere, in a friendly, multi-modal, efficient, and effective way, by overcoming barriers of distance, language, and culture and by using multiple Internet-connected devices’.1 The ‘Library’ is being de- and re-constructed, with a digital future being seen as the norm in many environments. Digital libraries will not necessarily be linked to a physical space or a single organization, though many have grown – and will continue to grow – out of a single entity, which may have a physical base, collections and services as well as digital ones. In most cases, the digital library will bring together content and services from a range of suppliers, both commercial and non-commercial. In the digital library, physical location is immaterial and formats are diverse. (Baker, 2006) What will the library be for, what will it be doing, in 20 years time? What are the things done now that should be distilled and preserved for the future, the unique roles and tasks that should continue, however technology might develop, and which are so demonstrably vital that funders and policy-makers will want to pay for them? A number of definitions of a digital library have been put forward in recent years. The most popular were analysed in Digital Library Economics (Baker and Evans, 2009). The working definition of the Digital Library Federation is regularly cited and appears to have a wide currency: Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities. (Digital Library Federation, 1998) The definition from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) stresses the distributed nature of electronic library provision: A ‘digital library’ provides access to digital collections (as opposed to print, microform, or other media) using one or more interlinked information retrieval systems. The digital content may be stored locally within the institution, in a repository or stored remotely for example in a JISC data centre or a national repository and accessed via the Janet network.2 More recently, Candela et al. (2011) have provided another variant on the basic definition, as follows: A potentially virtual organisation, that comprehensively collects, manages and preserves for the long depth of time rich digital content, and offers to its targeted user communities specialised functionality on that content, of defined quality and according to comprehensive codified policies. Our definition of a ‘digital library’ remains much the same as it was in Digital Library Economics: An Academic Perspective (Baker and Evans, 2009): …an organizational entity that brings together a wide range of … assets, including metadata, catalogues, primary source materials, learning objects, datasets and digital repositories – in a structured and managed way. It will be a place to search for these assets, to discover their existence, to locate them and then, if required, receive them. It will also recognize and support the core authoring functions of creation, iteration, finalization and publication. (Baker, 2006, cited in Baker and Evans, 2009) In addition, digital libraries must maintain, store and preserve in ways not envisaged in a traditional library set-up. Elements of a digital library may include the conversion of existing services into digital mode or the creation of new services, for example ‘online delivery, portals, personalised services, online teaching modules, online reference, digitised collections, or electronic publishing’ (Poll, 2005). The emphasis will vary depending upon context, need and priority, though the basic elements identified here are typically always present (see, for example, Digital Library Federation, 1998; Seadle and Greifeneder, 2007). The need for economics
Libraries – of all types – face an uncertain future (Feather, 2004; Grant, 2010). So do publishers and others involved in the creation, publication and dissemination of information and knowledge (see, for example, Paulson, 2011; Johnson, 2012). Continuing global economic difficulties and increased competition from other services and alternative means of provision mean that libraries will have to fight for resources, including through the development of strategic approaches and partnerships (Rasmussen and Jochumsen, 2003). In Digital Library Economics (Baker and Evans, 2009) we stressed the importance of the financial and related aspects of digital library management and development: Economics is a complex subject, and there are close links with other elements of the sophisticated and subtle value chain that is library provision and usage. It is more than just being about finances. Information has an economic value, not least in terms of added value, and in particular what it enables people to do once they possess information. (Baker and Evans, 2009) However, it is only since the late 1990s that the need for a better understanding of all economic aspects of digital libraries – and notably cost, funding, long-term financial implications and the need to ensure sustainability – has been fully recognised. The drive to ensure sustainability has become ever more important and prevalent: And more and more new projects are being created with the premise that they should develop into sustainable services. Regardless of the initial intention, if the projects cannot achieve financial sustainability, they will either limp along or fail altogether. (Guthrie et al., 2008) In Digital Library Economics (Baker and Evans, 2009), we discussed in some detail the key themes surrounding the development of the digital library in the first decade of the twenty-first century, as do the other authors in that volume. Those themes were further developed and broadened in Libraries and Society: Role, Responsibility and Future in an Age of Change (Baker and Evans, 2011) and even more so in Trends, Discovery and People in the Digital Age (Baker and Evans, 2013). The future of libraries – of all kinds – will be as dependent on economic and financial sustainability as on technological developments, though having said that it is clear that the two key themes of sustainability and innovation are inextricably linked. As both Eakin and Pomerantz (2009) and Koehn and Hawamdeh (2010) point out, libraries are in yet another phase of belt tightening and this situation is likely to continue for some considerable time. All library systems are required to be efficient, effective and relevant, and economic pressures (see, for example, Martinez et al., 1998; Hutchings 2009; Koehn and Hawamdeh, 2010) are leading to the questioning of received wisdom and accepted models, the development and implementation of radical solutions and a resulting trend towards discontinuous change simply because existing ways of doing...
