Preservation in the age of large-scale digitization

The digitization of millions of books under programs such as Google Book Search and Microsoft Live Search Books is dramatically expanding our ability to search and find information. The aim of these large-scale projects?to make content accessible?is interwoven with the question of how one keeps that content, whether digital or print, fit for use over time. This report by Oya Y. Rieger examines large-scale digital initiatives (LSDIs) to identify issues that will influence the availability and usability, over time, of the digital books these projects create. Ms. Rieger is interim assistant university librarian for digital library and information technologies at the Cornell University Library. The paper describes four large-scale projects?Google Book Search, Microsoft Live Search Books, Open Content Alliance, and the Million Book Project?and their digitization strategies. It then discusses a range of issues affecting the stewardship of the digital collections they create: selection, quality in content creation, technical infrastructure, and organizational infrastructure. The paper also attempts to foresee the likely impacts of large-scale digitization on book collections

Legacy Missions in Times of Change: Defining and Shaping Collections in the 21st Century

Despite the rapidly changing information and technology landscape, collections remain at the heart of academic libraries, signifying their enduring importance in providing access to our cultural heritage. Given broader trends in research and the current information ecology of an increasingly networked, distributed, and licensed environment, building collections and developing collection polices is increasingly ambiguous. These trends impact librarians in form of ever-expanding portfolios, diffusion of effort, weakened sense of focus, and a rising sense of persistent yet unmet needs for developing new skills. This paper outlines current research on collection trends and summarizes the interactive exchanges from the 2019 Charleston Conference Lively Session (https://sched.co/UZR5). Through live polling, session participants identified key trends in libraries and collections: Key trends included business models, budget constraints, consortium deals, continued importance of subscribed content, access vs. ownership, digitization of unique local collections, digital humanities, digital scholarship, library publishing projects, growing library investments in Open Access (OA), and collection diversification efforts with a view to equity and social justice. Among emerging library services, data services and digitization ranked highest in importance. The most-cited wish-list items included transformative deals, stronger campus partnerships, more OA projects, reduced copyright barriers in sharing homegrown digitized video content, as well as skill development in Counter 5 and data analysis. Existing physical and digital preservation programs received only lower-middle strength ratings. Among long-established library characteristics, collection policies, subscribed content, interlibrary loan, and consortial borrowing and lending retained enduring value and high rankings in importance. Tensions continue between ownership, borrowing, and access