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Post by Nathan Rinne on Jan 19, 2018 19:55:00 GMT
Here are some of Lewis' interesting and provocative points/thoughts about PDA:
Is Lewis more right than he is wrong here? Or vice-versa? Why?
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Post by Scott on Jan 23, 2018 21:21:49 GMT
One difficulty with this is the instability of e-resource platforms. Most university libraries of even modest size have multiple ebook platforms out of necessity, and spreading titles across them makes for a frustrating user experience. They all have their own (terrible) DRM systems, and they're navigation is often clunky. It's hard to want to increase the percentage of the collection users experience this way. Moving largely to ebooks also increases the likelihood that the sunk costs in a given platform will make abandoning it extremely difficult (or at least expensive), and puts the continuing availability of a library's collection in the hands of its vendors to an even larger extent than it already is. What happens to all the titles we bought if a company no longer supports their ebook platform?
Using PDA for physical items...even if the Amazon idea could be implemented, I doubt it would earn glowing reviews from patrons. Given how often students are not willing to wait even 24 hours to get a book from another CLIC school, I suspect very strongly that most of them wouldn't bother with books. They'd rely on whatever we had on the shelves, and if that's nothing, they'd rely on whatever ebooks or free books they could find. In the future where most things are available through Google Books or HathiTrust or something that might be okay, but in the short term it's no good.
The negatives of going to a PDA ebook model of book purchasing might be outweighed by the positives of the space it frees up and the money that isn't going into books that never leave the shelf, but I think it would be awfully hard to get any data on whether or not such a model is meeting users needs. We could tell what is being bought and saved, but I wonder how we'd know when a student just abandoned trying to get what they are looking for through the library.
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Post by Rhonda Gilbraith on Feb 16, 2018 19:09:36 GMT
Much depends on what he means by “Legacy Print;” if he's primarily talking about the kind of comprehensive collections that were meant to preserve content when it was more scarce, then yes, we’re in a good position to more freely discard low-use and just-in-case content and to shape collections to best fit the dynamic needs of our communities. But if he means something broader--as in discarding most print monographs in favor of ebooks--I can’t get behind that.
His recommendation is based on these assumptions: print collections are largely unused, and our academic library patrons prefer digital copies of books. Various studies have contradicted these conclusions, including a very recent one [Fry, A. (2018). Factors affecting the use of print and electronic books: A use study and discussion. College and Research Libraries, 79(1), 68-85.] that shows that in fact print collections are used at a much higher rate than the famous, oft-cited Pittsburgh study, and also at a significantly higher rate than comparable ebooks. Print books are preferred in most subject areas, as many of us who work at our libraries’ Reference Desks can confirm on an anecdotal level.
E-content has numerous benefits as well as drawbacks. But all these considerations aside, we can also say that our most important mission is to support learning and scholarship at our institutions. If we decide on behalf of these communities what is best--which format and access method--over their preferences--we’ll render ourselves less relevant and may even inspire animosity and distrust.
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