Some highlights from the 2006 Charleston Conference:

 Open Access

A recurring theme was the question of sustainable business models for journal publishing and access. Open Access, with varying funding through authors’ fees (pay to publish) and / or ads (and in large part free to users of the information), may or not be the panacea to solve all libraries’ subscription-budget woes. While some “Open Access evangelists” proclaim that Open Access is the wave of the future, others think Open Access may at best have niche application for specialized areas and continue on a fairly small scale. At issue: how long and on what scale will authors pay to publish? Will a pay-to-publish model mean quality control, or will authors be shut out?  Will pay-to-publish and ad-based funding generate enough income? Will ad-based funding fizzle out and return us to the subscription-based model?

 

Digital Archiving

When publishers go out of business, what happens to the electronic content we subscribe to? Here today gone tomorrow? LOCKSS is a library and publisher initiative of preserving digital content through membership- (and grant) supported crawl software which crawls digital providers’ sites to create a permanent archive. While there are more questions than answers, this project was founded in the spirit of libraries’ traditional role of owning & preserving information for posterity. It is spearheaded by Stanford University -- more info at http://www.lockss.org -- another example of digital archiving initiative: PORTICO -- more at http://www.portico.org/

 

Curmudgeonlike predictions:

1. The future of books

By digitizing our books, giving away, throwing away, and selling our hardcopies, we libraries are outsourcing ourselves. Professor Matthew Bruccoli (USC) suggests an acute need for “bookmen” with an eye for scholarly content and exemplary print volumes. The trend? High-end rare-book rooms where these saved books reside; a mindless electronic world where people don’t read for the rest of humanity.

 

2. The future of libraries / prescriptions for the future

Look hard at all print processing and give it up. “Starve books”. Ditch check-in and switch to RSS notification of new electronic issues instead. Implement federated searching across all library resources and move toward electronic resources.

Recurring themes in several of the conference sessions:

Consider patrons’ learning styles and information-related behavior. Conduct strategic format review. Does the mix of currently held formats meet patrons’ needs? Don’t just shift formats for the sake of shifting. Think long-term and participate in digital archiving initiatives such as LOCKSS and PORTICO.

From a group session led by Tony Ferguson and Chuck Hamacker

How can libraries retain (or regain, if lost) respect and relevance? Be business partner to constituences, shy away from silly gimmicks to increase foot traffic -- As asked in one of the sessions, “the library is a serious place. are we projecting the seriousness of our information-and-knowledge-linking role”?