Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
organizations (Library of Congress, 2009). In Europe another initiative
is under way: the European Digital Library - Europeana - is aiming to
link users directly to digitized heritage content accessible in a Web 2.0
environment. It hopes to expose national content to new audiences and
all levels of learning, and extend the knowledge and understanding of
each nation's heritage (EDL Foundation, 2007). In the UK, JISC has
funded a £22 million digitization programme, which has run in two
phases. The first phase saw collections such as the British Library
Archival Sound Recordings and British Newspapers 1800-1900
digitized. In the second phase Historic Polar Images, Radio News
Archive and the British Cartoon Archive, among others, were made
freely available online (Sykes, 2008).
As Alastair Dunning points out in Chapter 5, many challenges
remain to be addressed in terms of sustainability of digital collections
and application of international standards, but the message for libraries
and publishers is clear. The way forward is to continue the digitization
of our valuable heritage materials, and also to work towards improving
the flow of digital content into wider arenas and allowing users to
interact with the digital data.
E-journals, e-books and other e-stuff
E-journals
Journals have always been one of the most important types of resource
for scholars. They have also constituted the major spend on materials in
most academic libraries. Currently there are about 21,000 peer-
reviewed journals published worldwide, containing about 1.4 million
articles each year, and the world market for scholarly journals is
estimated at £5 billion. According to Mabe (2006), the number of
journals continues to grow year on year by about 3% and the number
of articles grows at approximately 3.5% per year. Amazingly, these
figures have been relatively consistent over the last 200 years. However,
that may be about to change. Robert Parker, Managing Director of
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Publications, recently told members
of his Library Advisory Board that submissions to the RSC are up 47%
in 2009. The society published 35% more articles in 2008 and it will
publish 30% more again in 2009. Ian Russell, in Chapter 3, goes into
more detail regarding the growth of research output. The increasing
