Sunday, October 23, 2005

Libraries in the digital world

Looking for a two-page summary of the challenges that the Web is presenting to the library and its traditional roles in collection development, preservation, and reference? Print out this article from that latest issue of Educause Review that's making the library blog rounds (for example, see here).

1 comment:

Barbara said...

Any library that charges $7.50 for an interlibrary loan is pricing itself out of the market - and someone has simply decided it's no longer a public good worth supporting. I am spoiled here in Minnesota - we have such a seamless ILL system we can "compete" with Amazon. Or to put it in less commercialized terms, we take the importance of libraries as a public good seriously enough to fund the underlying systems.

However, I don't think (is it?) that this is a problem for most academic libraries. I think a lot of us are doing much more than this article suggests. In fact, in the same publication a year ago Edward Ayers praised librarians for being the heroes of academia who had bridged the divide between IT and academic cultures most effectively.

Barbara