Managing Electronic Resources: New and Changing Roles for Libraries

Citation

Cox, A.M. (2010), "Managing Electronic Resources: New and Changing Roles for Libraries", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 71-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330331011019717

This book is an easy‐to‐read introduction to current issues in the integration of access to library content. Its focus is primarily on technical matters, rather than a wider strategic context. It is very much the perspective of the academic (and national) library; other sectors probably experience things a little differently. However, the clear explanations and lively awareness of issues and innovations on both sides of the Atlantic will make this book a valued source for those interested in electronic resource management; for students and for continuing professional development.

Chapter 1 sets the scene by reminding us about the evolution from owned print collections through the proliferation of e‐content systems and explains a few of the attempts to redefine the notion of the library in this context. Chapter 2 lays out in more detail the long‐ term challenge for libraries to provide integrated access to all sorts of e‐content, with print material. It explains the need to refocus from locally held physical collections to the handling, including automated exchange, of large quantities of rapidly changing metadata. Chapter 3 explains the key technologies that make up current integrative structures, such as link resolvers, federated search, electronic resource management systems and proxy servers. Chapter 4 reviews the main types of content now available to libraries and their users, such as that provided by aggregators and publishers, although the author does not mention local digital collections, repositories or freely accessible full text, such as government publications (although the latter is mentioned in Chapter 10). Chapter 5 further reviews the main features of the current infrastructure, e.g. the integrated library system (ILS), automated data exchange, link resolution. This is one of the longer and more important chapters in which the author reviews the key areas of work and challenges in providing integrated access, such as obstacles to information exchange, link checking, skill shortages and cost.

Subsequent chapters elaborate subsidiary themes. Chapter 6 explains why we still need both OPACs and federated search tools. Chapter 7 reviews the need for fewer, simpler interfaces and some promising signs of standardisation; but also considers some ongoing obstacles to full integration, such as CD‐ROMs. Chapter 8 describes various interesting experimental search tools and services. Chapter 9 considers attempts specifically to provide integration through the whole search process. Chapter 10 reviews big scale collaborations and initiatives, such as Crossref, Open WorldCat and Google Books as models of working in a networked world. Chapter 11 reviews the web services concept, concluding that, properly understood, this lies in the future. Chapter 12 considers other features of the environment such as open source and standards. The final chapter is a conclusion, reiterating the need for simpler, standard means of integration.

As Webster concludes, providing easy to navigate, integrated searching for users will remain a central but unachieved aspiration for libraries for some time to come. Workable integration has been achieved, but through a few systems, not one and much more in certain areas than others. The library maintains its own ILS (but buying metadata more than creating it) and it probably buys content in terms of an e‐journal knowledge base. Generally, with a little persistence, full text can be reached for much recent academic material, especially journal articles. The situation is messier if one thinks about other forms of content, e.g. information made freely available by government bodies. While leaving many gaps this situation makes access to a huge body of content much better than ever before in history. Complete integration is a desirable ideal, but there is not much chance, surely, of it being fully achieved.

At different points Webster considers many ongoing obstacles to achieving full integration: such as publishers' commercial interest in unique interfaces (p. 13); library organisations still being geared to manual rather than mass batch data operations (p. 54); skills shortages among librarians (p. 95); digital divides between libraries in terms of resources (p. 99); the impossibility of replacing the OPAC with the distributed search engine (pp. 116‐7); the survival of legacy systems such as CD‐ROMs (p. 137); the inherent need of innovators to overthrow standards (p. 207); and ultimate barriers to the complexity in distributed systems (p. 221). I would have been interested in a chapter that considered these factors in a consolidated way. Further, as Webster suggests, the obstacles are less technical than “economic, organisational and inertial” (p. 21). If the book has a weak spot, I think it is in its limited attempt to explore systematically this wider, long‐term strategic context, as opposed to focussing on specific immediate and typically technical challenges.

I think we should also fully acknowledge that improvements in access have not, primarily, been achieved by the direct effort of the library community. Is it really true, for example, that “libraries have developed linking technologies”? (p. 218) Perhaps this is just a way of talking. For earlier in the book, in describing the evolution of current solutions as “accidental” (p. 20), I think the author is acknowledging that libraries have, and continue to, respond to changes, rather than be able to direct change. Inevitably so, given the complex economic and social forces that seem to govern the evolution of the internet. Health lies in a culture of responsiveness and certain strategies such as openness and collaboration. But some greater exploration of the forces shaping change is surely necessary to help define what the library role individually or collectively should be. I think the book is a bit hazy about the analysis here.