CLIRinghouse Number 10

The Issue for Presidents and CAOs:

What to Expect from Digital Library Development

The Start-Up Digital Library:

Experimenters in the “Skunk-Works”

• They focused more on technical experimentation than on user expectations.
• They experimented with online access to library services that are traditional, developing computer-accessible catalogs, for example, and digital versions of reference materials.
• They developed outside of regular library units in relatively autonomous “skunk-works” (research labs), without the involvement of other library staff.
• Their funding came less from library budgets than from external grants, which provided stature while reducing institutional financial risks.
• They felt competitive with the digital library programs of other universities, and this inhibited collaboration and standards development.
• They hoped to develop electronic resources without disturbing traditional library attitudes, organization, functions, and staffing.

The Mature Digital Library:

Building it so They Will (and Can) Come

• They focus more on user needs, working with and marketing themselves to faculty members and students instead of assuming that “if we build it, they will come.”
• They work more on core technologies, policies, and professional skill development than on individual, experimental projects.
• They support “e-scholarship”—new kinds of publications and other scholarly products made accessible online rather than through print—as well as digitized library materials.
• They are better integrated with traditional libraries.
• They become proportionally more reliant upon core as opposed to “soft” or external funding.

This is where many digital libraries are now.

The Future Digital Library:

Collaboration Within and Beyond the Campus

• Networked collections and services will be as central to libraries as stacks and catalogs have been.
• Numerous lines in core budgets will provide digital library funding.
• Experimentation will remain ongoing.
• Libraries will set collection, preservation, and access priorities looking at all information formats together.
• Libraries will become more dependent on each other.
• Libraries will work on presenting electronic information so that it best serves needs of student and faculty users, and will establish media and technology centers where librarians, faculty, and technologists can collaborate to meet research and teaching needs.

Additional Information: