RE: One library or many?

[brs4@lehigh.edu]

Unless below is meant in jest, it overlooks the practical reality that it
will be a very long time (perhaps never?) before all the past stock of
world's print periodical literature is digitized, not to mention made
available via open access, despite all the laudable talk about article
self-archiving, open access, etc etc. Who's going to maintain all this
paper and lead patrons to it?

And what of books? When and if the ideal electronic book is finally
designed, and all electronic books made open access (something we will not
see any time soon), there will still be a huge stock of print books from
the past that will remain undigitized, at least (again) for a very long
time. Again, who will maintain all this print? It is likewise going to be
a very long time before a and i services are all going to be open access.
Purchase and selection of these and other electronic materials (including
proprietary electronic reference resources) requires prudential budgetary
decisions, hardly something to be left in the hands of volunteer
specialists.

Finally, even if the sum total of all material (journals, books, and a and
i sources, not to mention reference resources) were electronically open
access in some hypothetical possible world, who is going to teach
undergraduates what a journal article is, and how to do a responsible
search for same? Who will design locally tailored interfaces for accessing
these materials and explaining them? In short, time-strapped volunteers
cannot develop the depth of experience and ability to act on it that
librarians have. In brief, the latter can be quite confident of their job
security, in the long term! I'm not a bit worried.

Brian Simboli

Quoting D Anderson <dh-anderson@corhealth.com>:

> Joe makes a good point. Centralized data repositories, with comprehensive
> backup and archive capabilities, will likely replace library storage of
> periodicals, thereby removing substantial layers of redundancy and
> associated costs.
> 
> Electronic delivery eliminates the need for library-based archival and
> retrieval functions. Open access will make the library's traditional
> acquisition and gatekeeper functions unnecessary. What's left are
> reference functions, which could be provided by virtual networks of
> volunteer specialists.
> 
> Does anyone have any estimates of how much this would save the
> average-size university?
> 
> Dean H. Anderson