[LIS-Forum] Online resources threaten livelihood of libraries

[madhuresh.singhal]

You may be interested to read this. This is taken from current issue of
Nature (2007; 446: 958-9) and available online at
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7139/full/446958b.html

Regards
Madhuresh Singhal
Assoc. Res. Scientist - Inf. Sc.
Advinus Therapeutics Pvt. Ltd.
21 & 22, Phase 2, Peenya Industrial Area, Bangalore - 560058
Phone: +91 80 28394959; Mobile 098861 82822
E-mail: madhureshsinghal at yahoo.com
http://nettalk2.tripod.com/

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Online resources threaten livelihood of libraries

Lucy Odling-Smee

Closures restrict public access to documents from US agencies.

The closure of five of the 26 regional libraries of the US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) last year sparked international protest.
Congressional hearings were held, and a government investigation was
launched. In February this year, the president of the American Library
Association told Congress that the closures have restricted access to
information in at least 31 states.

The EPA is not alone - last year, the Department of Energy closed its
headquarters library in Washington DC. And now, NASA is considering
downsizing its network of libraries - including the one at its leading
science-research centre, the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland.

Tight budgets could bring even more whittling of libraries in the United
States. "When budgets are threatened, agencies tend to say let's put the
library on the chopping block," says Tara Olivero, assistant director at
the American Library Association in Washington DC.

Libraries are already working to reinvent themselves in a digital world
in which online access is fast reducing the need for rows of books and
stacks of journals. But a full transition to electronic resources might
not save money as agencies hope.

Officials at the EPA, whose libraries provide a wide range of
information about environmental protection and management, initially
cited a proposed budget cut of US$2 million - an 80% drop from the
previous year - as the main reason for downsizing its library network.
Yet critics point out that internal EPA studies have suggested that
having a librarian saves between $3 and $7 in professional staff time
for every dollar invested. Since the closures, EPA librarians have
struggled to maintain the same level of cost effectiveness. On
requesting a publication from another library, they are sometimes told
that the item is not available and that no one knows where it is, says
Bernadine Abbott Hoduski, a former EPA librarian.

The agency is working to convert all EPA documents into an electronic
format, and its spokeswoman Jessica Emond says that the project "has not
incurred additional cost". But critics argue that for agencies
considering downsizing their physical libraries, going electronic will
almost certainly require more, not less, money.

For a start, not everything can be digitized, and dedicated staff are
needed to assess what material should be put in digital form. Content
must also be produced using technologies that will be usable decades in
the future. "In many ways you need a higher level of expertise to
produce and maintain an electronic service than a physical one," says
Anne Kinney, a NASA scientist and chair of a group that recently
assessed how the print materials at the Goddard library could be
reduced.

The demand for library services other than shelf space has shown no sign
of tapering off and, if anything, has increased in recent years. To
ensure that electronic resources don't result in costs simply being
transferred to individual researchers, those services need sustained
funding, librarians say.

At the Naval Research Laboratory library in Washington DC, chief
librarian James King says that he has seen a dramatic falling-off in the
number of people walking through the door. But "space is not synonymous
with service", he says. Use of the naval library's online databases has
doubled in the past five years.

There is a risk of people seeing libraries only as warehouses," King
says. He and others argue that in a time of information overload,
librarians have an ever-more-valuable role in designing web interfaces
that facilitate browsing and focused searches. They also create and
operate databases specific to the needs of the research communities they
serve, and have intricate knowledge of electronic resources across
agency- and university-library networks. And in a world where new
journals are continually coming online, librarians say they are best
placed to negotiate with publishers to obtain the cheapest site-licence
contracts and to monitor the changing needs of a specific community of
users.
For her part, Kinney envisions a different future for the science
library. Instead of silent halls with towering racks of books, smaller
meeting places could double up as information centres, where researchers
can plug in their laptops, hold discussions, and talk to librarians
about how to navigate the myriad resources online.

NASA has not yet made any decisions about closing any libraries, but the
issue is likely to remain on the table: "The NASA budget isn't getting
any bigger," notes Robin Dixon, chief librarian of Goddard. The
challenge will be to cut back on physical resources without cutting back
on service.



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