Business Planning for Digital Libraries

Citation

Xu, C. (2011), "Business Planning for Digital Libraries", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 246-247. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330331111129796

Business Planning for Digital Libraries, edited by Mel Collier, approaches the subject matter from a global perspective, collecting a broad range of literature in both public and academic domains. The book aims to present a holistic view of the digital library planning process and trends in the context of a business framework.

The book comprises 21 papers from 26 authors, organized into three chapters. The overall structural issues of digital library planning are being addressed in the first chapter with representations in broad subject domains: cultural heritage, higher education, arts and social sciences, and scientific, technical and medical (STM) libraries. The second part addresses the practical aspects of digital library planning in terms of different content categories. These include e‐journals, e‐books, e‐archives, e‐archives of web materials, digital preservation, digital repositories, multilingualism, open access and metadata. The final segment shares experiences of European and US libraries, for instance the digital libraries of the Denmark public libraries; the California Digital Library; and the Oxford Digital Library. Given its extensive coverage, the book is helpful to digital library practitioners and technical staff to get a thorough understanding of digital library planning and management in any discipline.

The juxtaposition of digital library planning under a commercial/business environment is a major contribution. Increasingly the return on investment (ROI) for digital libraries has come under scrutiny by publicly funded agencies and therefore the business case is essential. The book provides a good starting point for the discussion of digital library planning in terms of ROI or business efficiency and adds significantly to the limited corpus of knowledge in this domain.

The book is hardly technical and is not prescriptive. While the book attempts to integrate all issues pertaining to the successful planning of digital libraries, the lack of best case examples leave many questions unanswered. Indeed, one of the authors, Ian Anderson, has commented that: “Critical issues such as market analysis and segmentation, user evaluation, impact measurement, costs, income, financial planning, ROI, marketing and risk analysis are more opaque than they ought to be.”

Most authors have addressed the issues based on their own management experiences. The open sharing of insights is a valuable contribution to the understanding of business planning for digital libraries. A few encouraging signs of successful innovation have also shed light on the future of digital library planning. For example, Oxford University is testing the effectiveness of a Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly Resources in justifying digitising effort; a toolbar developed by the Medical Library of Groningen University has proved to be effective in assisting user navigation; and collective bargaining with digital content providers at the national level has been effective in saving public expenditure in many cases.

There is potential for further exposition on dealing with contemporary challenges on the shift in digital library retrieval patterns, changes in consumer reading behaviour, needs of mass customisation for different user groups, user generated content management and sustainable financing models.