strategic future of print
“Last Friday I attended the RLG Partnership Symposium. The topic – When the books leave the building – reflected the growing discussion around the management of legacy print collections across the academic library system. The balance between local print, offsite print (local or shared), and emerging digitised collections, presents interesting choices. These are tactical as competing interests are managed, and strategic as decisions are made about mission, sustainability and responsibility to the scholarly record. Interestingly, the outcome of one discussion was that maybe 25 libraries in the US might see it as part of their mission to remain committed to the management of the print scholarly record.” Lorcan Dempsey
A cascade of white papers and reports suggest that libraries are in a transition to mixed print and screen based services and that this transition is not yet completed. Accordingly, demand for direct access to books is projected to diminish as screen delivered copies prove popular. What implications can this transition have for the continuing role of print in the context of its digital delivery? Do attributes of the paper book suggest a new interdependence between print and screen access?
Three outstanding speakers will address issues of the strategic future of print. These are Walt Crawford, editor of the journal Cites & Insights who will consider “inclusive” reading and the interdependence of print and screen, Shannon Zachary, Preservation Librarian from the University of Michigan who will review the Googlization of libraries, and Doug Nishimura from the Image Permanence Institute who will consider known and unknown aspects of print on demand technology.
This program, co-sponsored by PARS and RBMS, Sunday 27 at 10:30, (at ALA annual) will be of interest to those concerned with long term access to and status of print collections. A summary bibliography will be provided.
So what was the future of the book after all? Not too surprisingly we are drifting toward an inclusive reading scenario and an inherent logic of the interdependence of distinctive print and screen formats. This is the messy agenda of projecting both formats forward. It is also the messy agenda of realizing that each of the print and screen formats of books have shifted their separate roles as enclaves of culture transmission.