Effects of the digitization to the printed collection policies: The digital knowledge economy and the Finnish academic libraries

The recent changes in the knowledge economy and scientific knowledge dissemination have put academic libraries in a new situation. The demand for open access of scientific publications and the increasing amount of documents published need a new paradigm in the collection policies and collection building strategies of the academic libraries. At the same time the resources allocated to the academic institutions have been decreasing which has caused the need to reallocate the resources in the collection building and management as effectively as possible. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how the use of data compiled from different sources, such as statistics and assessing user experience, as a tool for analysing the effectiveness of the library’s economic resources and how this has effected on the use of the libraries.

Statistical and trend analysis based on Finnish academic library collections database.

The Finnish academic libraries have made a rapid transition to the digital dissemination of documents. At the same time the national services have enabled the long-time preservation of less used printed materials and have enabled the libraries to save premise costs.

Modeling the findings to other countries maybe difficult because of the specific characteristics of the Finnish academic environment.

Gives examples on managing the shift from a printed to a digital library.

Evidence based tools for collection cost management.