Digital Dilemmas and Solutions

Citation

Tedd, L.A. (2005), "Digital Dilemmas and Solutions", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 78-80. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330510578859

In the week when I started reviewing this book I became very aware, through the catalogue of books recently (or about to be) published by Chandos that I was sent, and by the news that a book by one of our Editorial Board members was to be launched by Chandos at the London School of Economics (Secker, 2004) that there is a major new series of books for library and information professionals. As stated on Chandos Publishing's web site (see www.library‐chandospublishing.com) the aim of the Information Professional series “is to publish books of the highest possible standard: books that are both intellectually stimulating and innovative”. The new series, with titles such as A Librarian's Guide to the Internet, The Strategic Management of Technology for Libraries, Cataloguing Without Tears, Online Information Services in the Social Sciences, Information Literacy: A Practitioner's Guide, includes works which have been specially commissioned to provide busy librarians and information professionals with an authoritative view of current thinking on a range of topics.

The author of Digital Dilemmas and Solutions, Dr Peter Limb, is the Bibliographer in the Africana (African Studies) section of Michigan State University Libraries, having previously worked in the Library of the University of Western Australia. He has had much practical experience of the dilemmas and challenges faced by library and information professionals in providing services in this “digital age”. As he notes in the Introduction, “[T]oday all librarians face daunting challenges posed by recent trends in technology, publishing and education as the impact of a globalising information economy constantly forces a rethink of both strategic directions and everyday operations in the library.” This book attempts to provide suggestions for solving the challenges and the author recognises that these “can never be prescriptive but are rather guides to action”.

Developing a structure for a book such as this can be a challenge in itself. The structure adopted comprises seven main chapters each with an introduction, a conclusion and between one and five further sections. The first chapter, “The impact of a globalising information economy”, outlines the broad socio‐economic context in which library and information professionals operate with recent developments in technology, publishing and education. The second chapter, “Libraries, digitisation and change”, describes some of the developments such as changes in the form and delivery of information, and the nature of library operations with particular discussion on changes in the provision of reference services. The next two chapters, “Changing strategies: winning the information game” and “Applying digital technologies” cover issues faced in the acquisition and collection development, presentation, management and preservation of digital information. In the fifth chapter, “User perspectives”, Limb notes that users (or clients, patrons, or customers) should be at the centre of library thinking and services and describes techniques for ways (physically and virtually) of attracting users to the library and teaching users about digital‐based services. “Managing change”, the sixth chapter, discusses management issues related to finance, personnel, operations and the need to realise that library and information professionals must cope with constant change if they are to survive. The seventh chapter analyses what the author refers to as “the complex and thorny ethical and legal dilemmas facing libraries” including reference to the US PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act of 2001. In the final short chapter, “Conclusions”, the author outlines a range of activities which he believes library and information professionals should pursue in order to “survive, adapt and flourish in the face of numerous challenges and opportunities of the digital age”. I will include just three here:

1. 1.

   “cooperate closely with other library stakeholders in all relevant areas, including open access publishing, consortia and document delivery”;

2. 2.

   “be flexible in policies and procedures”; and

3. 3.

   “comprehensively treat digital issues in strategic planning and procedures”.

In general this book is very well presented, clearly laid out and covers a good range of examples of solutions taken from libraries and information units in different countries around the world. For instance, on page 70 reference is made to the Vidyanidhi project to digitise dissertations at the University of Mysore in India, and a study of the needs of older users of the web undertaken by Monmouthshire Libraries in Wales (p. 100). There is a detailed index covering tenpages in a double‐column format and a set of some 200 or so references, mainly published in the 2000s, and relating to publications from various parts of the world.

In describing the series the statement is made that the books are designed to be “easy‐to‐read”. Although this was generally the case I found some of the writing, for example, “Serial subscriptions are chewing up more and more of the library budget” (p. 1) and “DSpace […] is a digital repository for sucking in the whole corpus of MIT research” (p. 68) to be rather more populist for a work of this nature than I might have expected. At the other extreme there were also examples of a very erudite form of writing that necessitated recourse to a dictionary “libraries today are syncretic combinations of traditional and digital library collections” (p. 5), and “the hegemony of the knowledge specialist may be undermined” (p. 14). Also there were some sentences the meaning of which was not entirely clear to me: “One of the nettles of the digital library has been the e‐book” (p. 103). I also spotted some typographic errors: for instance, NDLTD in the handy list of abbreviations at the start of the book was given as Networked Library of Theses and Dissertations (i.e. a missing Digital), Third Word (rather than Third World) on p. 42 and Chadwyck Healey was given as Chadwyck Healy (p. 52). In most cases URLs were usefully given to provide further information about any specific service/feature/library. However, this was not always the case as in the African Resource service Kwetu.Net, referred to on pages 42 and 52 (see www.kwetu.net) and ANGEL (p. 102).

Despite these quibbles I certainly would recommend this work in providing “tangible tips” for those working in libraries and information units and look forward to reading more titles from this new series.