P- and E-Attics?

Bill Keller. "Let's ban books, or at least stop writing them" NYT, July 13, 2011.

James Gleick. "Books and other fetish objects." NYT, July 16, 2011.

Annie Lowrey. "Readers without Borders." Slate, July 20, 2011.

These days I’m navigating a sea of p-books, e-books, and digital collections. With regard to print I identify with Keller's description of a "teetering stack of … books that [he] means to read someday." What with book group titles, library conference give-aways, and promotional copies, I must decide what to read and then quickly hand the freebies to friends and family. Otherwise the teetering stack quickly becomes a fire marshal’s nightmare in my attic. To my family’s distress I’m not ruthless about weeding.

I’m now acquiring book group titles on my e-reader. While browsing the online shop I often download additional non-book group titles. Oddly, I also peruse the physical bookstore shelves, and then download e-versions while sipping coffee in the café. I now have an e-teetering e-pile of e-books-to-be-read on my e-reader. I feel less guilty about acquiring e-books. I don't have to dust, move, or weed them. I also like that my e-reader is more portable than a pile of print.

Annie Lowry talks about book-sellers adapting to the e-world. On the PBS NewsHour last week Lowrey predicted we would still be reading print 50 years from now, even as we see a migration to digital. I certainly own enough volumes in my attic to keep myself entertained for decades. There’ll also be the competing e-pile. Might there come a time when I replace the print backlog with e-versions? Maybe, but not yet. I need to be able to get foreign e-titles. I look forward to the time when my e-ink reader will double as a back lit tablet computer.

In addition to my personal collections I’m enjoying digitized rare book and manuscripts collections on the Internet, although I also identify with James Gleick's “thrill” of handling the actual documents. Seeing the physical items in an unmediated environment is definitely an amazing experience. But with the digitized collections I have access to more knowledge, and I’m discovering treasures I might never have known about otherwise. And what about the born-digital geniuses who will be composing and promulgating their influential, world-changing work in the digital environment? Gleick warns that when we place high value on rare book and manuscript objects we treat them as if they were “talismans”, rather than instruments of knowledge and documentation. Will later scholars get the same thrill when viewing born digital documents? I feel energized by the increasing number of digitized works, even as I realize this new e-world seems to be changing scholarly research. Gleick points out that we will see "a profound transformation ... for the practice of history". With digitized special collections we have new research opportunities.

My “to read” p- and e-piles are growing exponentially. I love learning about humankind’s accomplishments and stories. As an information professional I greatly enjoy participating in the process of discovering, accessing and using knowledge and information in this dynamic environment.

Reiteration: Skills for our digital world

In our digital world, e-resource publishing is increasingly the norm in the Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities. Print-based technical service activities for mainstream print publications (not special collections materials) are already decreasing. Digital publications have been increasing and will continue to increase. An increasing number of new reference sources will be available in electronic format only. Cross-vendor tools for the organization and management of e-resources are emerging (e.g. Elsevier, Ebscohost Discovery Service, Summon, Google Scholar, etc). Vendors are supplying catalog records (brief records for acquisitions; full records for e-resources via services like MARCit! and Serials Solutions)

Libraries will increasingly seek to enter partnerships with other libraries and organizations, creating collaborative collection agreements. Archival material will increasingly come to us in digital format because that is how it is being created, stored and managed. Our special collections will continue to acquire unique material, much of which (but not all) will likely continue to be non-electronic.

Within a generation we will have born digital scholars. They’ll have grown up with, and done their research in a digital environment.

The library will have fewer staff. This staff will need a different mix of skills than our current staff has. Cataloging staff will use traditional cataloging skills less than the new skills needed in the digital dominant environment. We need people with an understanding of digital structure, different metadata schema, various digital formats, and the underlying architecture of various databases. We need people who understand the basic languages and structures of digital systems (RDF, XML, PHP, JAVA, etc.), and the possibilities and opportunities they present. We need managers who are able to conceptualize, plan, and carry out Collection Services projects.

We also need more people with foreign language skills to work with the growing number of multi-lingual e-resources. Knowledge of more than one language has become more critical than ever for discovery of and access to information in this new environment.

While it is true that we will need to continue managing our mainstream print collections (cataloging new material from not-yet-digital areas, clearing backlogs, record cleanup, preservation, storage), these tasks will eventually stabilize and decrease over time. Eventually we could even see shared depositories with staff who would take over the management of these materials and metadata from the originating libraries.