"Paul M. Gherman" <[email protected]> said: >I think with increased electronic information whether free >or commercial, the eventual costly infrastructure of >libraries as we know them today will decrease as will the >current number of staff working in libraries.
My quote above has stirred several comments to the contrary, and I am not suprised. I probably should have stated the other side of my position. Libraries general spend less than 50% of their total budget on actually purchasing information and the rest on staff, benefits, supplies etc. Buildings are generally not part of any annual costs. I certainly have a goal for our library to increase the % of our budget for information while decreasing other costs. The higher our % toward information, the better job we will be doing. I think Andrew Oldyzko has made the made the point in his writing, that libraries add a significant cost to the provision of information to the user. If hospitals have been able to wring cost out of their operation, libraries should be able to also. The "Productivity Paradox" mentioned by Henderson and alluded to by Tennant has been true for computers and productivity software up to now. But I think the publishing revolution is different - this change is not in productivity software, but in the nature of the product we purchase, store, preserve etc and deliver to our users. The very nature of our project and therefore our mission will change. If you look at the entire chain of costs in information delivery, the library is a signficant cost segment. I think electronic content will allow us to change our infrastructure and convert infrastructure dollars to information. We now subscribe to over 5,000 electronic journals - many sit on our shelves in paper, there are check in costs to the paper, reshelving costs, binding costs, claiming costs, let alone the cost of the shelf itself. These costs will eventuall go away, when we have the courage to cancel the paper version. But the storage and preservation cost will shift to another agency, maybe a publisher, maybe another organization like OCLC or CatchWord. Our information costs will rise as these storage costs are bundeled into the over all subscription costs. Fewer individuals are entering the library to gain access to our collections, as they can access them electronically. Fewer individuals are approaching the reference desk to ask questions. Well it is time to think about how we staff those public service points and reduce our costs of running them. E-books are just about to hit. We just subscribed to over 14,000 of them from netLibrary. With this collection, there were no individual title by title aquisitions costs, there will be very low cataloging costs, no shelving costs, no circulations cost or reshelving costs. We did not have to upack them and we will never rebind them. Now tell me why in this new environment why the "productivity paradox" holds true. Paul M. Gherman University Librarian 611B General Library 419 21st Avenue South Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37240 Office: (615) 322-7120 Fax: (615) 343-8279 [email protected]
