RECON revision
RECON (Converting the scholarly record).
Collection development and other interested librarians from academic and research libraries will create a working group to develop and begin implementing a plan for a national mass digitization project to convert holdings in North American research libraries.
The rationale for this effort is elaborated in the statement that appears below.
This group will accomplish the following:
- recommend a structure for administering and coordinating the project that ensures active support from institutions and associations whose backing will be necessary for the success of the project.
- recommend selection models and best practices for the initial stages of the project that will demonstrate its value, importance and viability.
- while actively seeking grant support to begin the work of the project, assume that the research library community must devote substantial resources, financial and human, to the project and be the primary source of funding.
- Take into account projects already in place nationally and internationally, and involve participants in those projects in planning this more global effort.
Why convert?
Scholars more and more rely upon materials in digital formats to do their work. Scholarly communication is likewise more and more a digital pursuit. We are approaching a time when research, study, and entertainment will all primarily draw upon electronic resources. While printed books and other analog materials will retain a place, their roles will be increasingly specialized.
This emerging digital environment will soon force libraries to provide access to a preponderance of their holdings through uniform electronic means. The e-resources that we buy and license will form part of this picture. We also need to ensure that our large and diverse legacy collections, as well as new resources acquired in non-digital formats, not be “lost” simply because of their format. Hybrid catalogs, combining card files for older materials with online records for the newer, fell short of supporting print-based research. Hybrid library collections, split among a host of digital and analog formats, will be no more successful. Our non-digital holdings need to become seamless components of the emerging electronic landscape.
The library community therefore needs to develop and implement a coordinated, standards-based, cost effective plan to digitize the nation’s retrospective holdings. A consensus around this common goal, and a shared sense of urgency, provide the starting point for more focused work to agree and then act upon specific strategies. The first goal is to secure the commitments of those responsible for library collections, staff resources, and budgets.
Many digitizing projects, of course, are already underway. Depending on their quality and their provisions for access (including cost), the library community may not need to replicate this work. We are well-advised to save time and money wherever we can. There’s also more than enough to be done:
-Each of our libraries holds unique or regionally scarce materials. Providing digital versions of these resources will benefit the holding library, and also scholars throughout the nation and the world. Massive projects that focus on only a few collections will not meet our goal.
-Certain digital resources will become most useful with specialized features, for instance fully accurate text capture and textual encoding for some print materials.
-Materials relevant to certain disciplines, for example chemistry or music, may likewise require enhanced treatments or special methods of capture and delivery in order to be fully functional in an electronic form.
-Some genre- or discipline-based sets of resources, for instance poetry or dictionaries, may require consistent treatment in ways defined by the grouping itself.
-Many formats of print and non-print materials—maps, newspapers, oversized materials, manuscripts, sound recordings, film, etc.—require special handling, or research and development work.
A large-scale effort to digitize the full range of library holdings will require its own organizational and technical infrastructure. Proper coordination, interoperable products, and provisions for consistent metadata and archiving, are all essential. Complementary measures to preserve analog originals will be necessary as well.
The research library community faces the near-term challenge of providing a comprehensive array of digital resources for our students and scholars. We have always interpreted scholarly needs, and then deployed our resources to address them. These goals remain central as we take our place in transforming the environment for scholarship and study.
- Edward Shreeves (Chair of the RECON group)
Director, Collections and Content Development
University of Iowa Libraries