Digital Library Economics: An Academic Perspective

Citation

Cox, A.M. (2011), "Digital Library Economics: An Academic Perspective", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 45 No. 1, pp. 121-122. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330331111107448

This is a substantial volume of over 300 pages, with 15 chapters written by well known figures in the UK profession and offering comprehensive coverage of the broad topic of financial or economic aspects of digital library activities, such as e‐journal licensing, costs and funding of digitisation and copyright.

The foreword is by Dame Lynne Brindley. The first two chapters are by the editors. Chapter 1 is about trends in how services are delivered. Chapter 2 identifies “key themes”: the costs and funding of digital libraries. Reg Carr sets out some history in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 is by Derek Law and is about key aspects of the costs of running a digital library. Chapter 5 is by two authors from Blackwells about the changing economics of publishing a journal and the impact of open archiving. In Chapter 6 Jean Sykes writes about the financial and economic aspects of the hybrid library concept. Chapter 7 represents three non‐UK perspectives, from Australia, Germany and the Netherlands. In Chapter 8 Hazel Woodward and Fytton Rowland write about e‐journals and e‐books from the library point of view. Stuart Dempster and Catherine Grout write about digitisation in Chapter 9. Mike McGrath covers document supply in Chapter 10. Lorraine Estelle writes about aspects of collection building in Chapter 11. Then, John Robinson looks at the costs of the institutional and shared infrastructure. Chris Awre's Chapter 13 is about the Cree project. Hugh Look and Alicia Wise look at the economics of copyright in Chapter 14, and the concluding chapter of the book is Simon Tanner writing about future trends.

Although there are two very substantial chapters by the co‐editors at the beginning of the book, what is a little lacking is a brief section scoping the book and suggesting how the chapters fit together into a coherent whole. Nevertheless, the purpose of each individual chapter is clear as a discrete entity, and many offer very readable and authoritative summaries of current thinking.

The focus is explicitly on academic libraries, not other library sectors. The voices are primarily of university librarians, though there is a reasonable representation of publishers. The editors' “environment chapter” is about current service trends, not the context that gives rise to the changes, where often the library sector is responding to outside developments. It does not address the issue of the contribution to the economy of digital libraries or even financial benefit to universities. So one could argue the widest context is not covered. It is also primarily a UK perspective, with authors from Australia, Germany and The Netherlands offering only short pieces, which together, make up just 40 pages of the whole book. JISC work is often mentioned, but I could only find one reference to relevant EU research projects. Also a very notable absence is the US perspective.

Of course, in the current economic climate in the UK the issue of economics will be even more salient. The text seems to have been completed in January 2009, so it does not really address this agenda directly. Nevertheless, the book brings together some good treatments of key financial aspects of the digital library, primarily from the UK academic librarian's perspective, that will be useful both to librarians and students.