Business Planning for Digital Libraries: International Approaches

Citation

Isfandyari‐Moghaddam, A. (2011), "Business Planning for Digital Libraries: International Approaches", Online Information Review, Vol. 35 No. 2, pp. 316-317. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521111128078

Business planning (BP), which according to Vallespir and Kleinhans (2001) is defined as a set of choices defining the structure, the resources and the infrastructure of a production system in order to optimise the integration of the company inside its economic environment, can be treated as a road map for the realisation of a continuous process. Accordingly, it is equivalent to effective management for different contexts, including digital libraries (DLs). In the words of Mel Collier, “gone are the days when a DL could be started up as a project without a realistic plan for its continuance into the future or could be allowed to disappear”.

It is to contribute to the field of DLs in association with business planning and its related issues, and to highlight the road from theory to practice, that Business Planning for Digital Libraries: International Approaches has been compiled. It consists of 21 chapters in three broad sections: framework chapters, practice chapters, and case studies. Section 1 (five chapters) draws attention to fundamental concepts and issues such as defining BP and elements for DLs; business model innovation in DLs where the cultural heritage is of high importance; designing DLs in higher education with the consideration of user design principles, technical remarks (architecture, infrastructure, and metadata), costing, marketing, financing, risk analysis, and implementation; DLs for the arts and social sciences; and planning DLs for scientific, technical and medical (STM) libraries with an emphasis on users and staff profiles.

Section 2 (nine chapters) discusses the place of e‐resources for BP implementation in DLs theoretically and practically; web archiving with respect to legal, technical and ethical issues; digital preservation with respect to organisational aspects, preservation policies, staff requirements, selection policies, costs management, IT infrastructure, quality and standards; digital institutional repositories; multilinguality for DLs with a focus on its various aspects; business models for open access (OA) publishing; and metadata for DLs. In seven chapters, Section 3 reports a group of case studies in various places (Denmark, New Zealand, Catalonia, California and Oxford) that have taken outstanding steps towards practice.

In terms of content, each chapter tries to revolve around BP elements and their applications in their particular field. Structurally, each chapter ends with a summary and general snapshot of what has been discussed, and a bibliography (references). The work suffers from the lack of two elements: compilation of all references in a single bibliography which could help readers find related works in a single effort, and an index for easily locating concepts and terms. It is hoped that in a possible future edition, successful samples of two continents (Asia and Africa) not included in the present work will be taken into consideration. Generally, this book bridges one of the main gaps in the DL literature from the economic and business perspective and is worth dipping into.