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The same kind of shift now is taking place in academic libraries in monographs.
Many research libraries continue to have very large legacy print collections. But most
academic libraries have reported that they have vastly curtailed current acquisitions of
print monographs in favor of e-book collections, often purchased through demand-
driven acquisitions.
This transition from print to digital library collections represents a major change,
invoking the question of whether the automation systems in place today can continue
to optimally handle the new workflows and business processes involved. The
overwhelming trend favors ever higher proportions of electronic and digital materials
with lower spending on print. That said, library collections will likely not reach a
point in the next decade or two where they consist entirely of digital materials. Some
amount of print and other physical materials will persist for the long-term future. The
proportions will change over time in favor of the digital and the print. The future of
library collections will become increasingly multi-faceted and not quickly evolve into
purely digital formats.
If that assumption proves true, libraries will increasingly require automation
systems designed to handle complex collections comprised of multiple formats,
primarily to manage electronic and digital resources but that can also efficiently
manage print and physical inventory. The current legacy systems, however, were
originally designed during the era when print dominated. These systems that were
developed for print, were later updated with an ability to manage electronic resources.
In many cases libraries have implemented separate applications or utilities to manage
their electronic resources. In this phase when academic libraries spend most of their
collection funds on electronic resources, they need the appropriate management and
discovery tools.
5
Transitions in Metadata
Much has also changed in the area of metadata used to describe library collections.
The MARC formats that have been employed in library automation systems for the
last 30 years are poised for change. For the last few years, many libraries have been
busy implementing new cataloging rules. RDA, Resource Description and Access, is
currently beginning to replace AACR2 as the principle cataloging rules used by many
national and academic libraries. This transition has been quite time-consuming and
expensive for technical services departments, with only incremental benefits in how
these records can be used in management and discovery systems. The implementation
of RDA has been especially painful given that many of these technical services
departments are already under tremendous pressure to operate more efficiently and
with fewer personnel.
The next change in library metadata will be even more drastic. The Initiative for
Bibliographic Transformation underway at the Library of Congress has produced a
proposed new format that brings bibliographic description of content items into the
realm of linked data. This new BIBFRAME structure (see Bibframe.org) represents a
mapping of the MARC formats into the RDF triple-stores and the conceptual arena of
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