A Case for Just in Case

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

A Case for Just In Case:  Open Access, Electronics, and the Institutional
Repository

The Open Access movement is moving along so very quickly, it might be a
good idea for us librarians to begin thinking about the future of
libraries in the OA world.  Here's a notion to help us get started.

It was decades ago when libraries, even the largest of libraries, decided
that it would not be possible to purchase and store completely
comprehensive collections.  Even the very best of collections would not
meet all of our users' needs.  It was absolutely necessary to meet some of
our users' needs by supplying information on a just-in-time or access
basis, through interlibrary loans, document delivery, and, more recently,
through licensing of access to information on a temporary basis.

There were substantial reasons for switching from just in case to just in
time.  More and more information was being produced, compounded by above
inflation rises in serial prices; libraries simply could not afford to buy
it all. Even if libraries could buy it all, however, in the print world,
it becomes awfully expensive to store all of this material.

An idea that I would like to bring forward for the consideration of
Liblicense readers, is whether the combination of the electronic medium
per se, open access, and the advent of the institutional repository, will
make it possible for librarians to begin to dream or think about a return
to just in case, in the near future.

The systems limitations that forced many to move away from locally loading
databases on our own servers, for example, have largely disappeared.  I
don't know enough about the physics involved to tell you whether all of
the world's scholarly information can now fit on the average computer or
not nowadays, but I am confident that a significant portion of it can at
the very least.  Even assuming tremendous continued growth in published
information, simultaneous continued growth in computing power may mean
that more information will require less server space. For example, for
arguments sake, (again, I have no idea of the physics involved), let;s say
that a database the size of Science Direct would need all the capacity of
my laptop.  If this database were to triple in size in the next few years,
given the advances in computing capacity, it seems likely that the next
time I buy a laptop, this triple size database would not only fit on my
laptop -- it would not need all of its capacity, but rather only a
fraction thereof.

To me, it seems obvious that the day when the world's scholarly,
peer-reviewed literature can easily be stored by each and every library in
the world -- a wise move to ensure its ready access and preservation � is
within reach, if indeed it is not here already.

If this sounds amazing, consider this: with the institutional repository,
we will be able to store other kinds of materials besides peer-reviewed
journal articles.  For example, student papers, faculty powerpoint
presentations, research data, and other kinds of grey literature. By
making this material openly accessible and available to everyone in the
world, we can all share in the ability to access all this extra material.

In Canada, thanks to the leadership of the Canadian Association of
Research Libraries (CARL), it is obvious that the libraries should be
taking the lead on development of the institutional repository.  Makes
sense to me -- who else understands all the implications of the need for
archiving and preserving information and making it available on a
perpetual basis, not to mention organizing information and helping people
to find the information they need?

For more information about the CARL Institutional Repository (IR) program,
see the CARL website at http://www.carl-abrc.ca/frames_index.htm - or
attend the CARL IR preconference to the Access Conference on October 13 in
Halifax -- details at the CARL web site - or the SPARC/SPARC Europe
Workshop Institutional Repositories:  the next stage -- details at
http://www.arl.org/sparc/

Heather Morrison
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network
heatherm@eln.bc.ca
604-268-7001
Fax:  604-291-3023
WAC Bennett Library
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6