Library patrons in today’s environment expect access to electronic items as well as physical materials. In fact, publishers are abandoning the traditional print model in favor of electronic formats that can be substantially less expensive for them to deliver. Physical and electronic versions of scholarly resources serve different purposes: the former may be preferred for embedded graphic objects, whereas electronic versions are easier to access, often in varying combinations of portable document format (PDF), hypertext markup language (HTML), MS Word, extensible markup language (XML), and text.
Research, and analysis concerns open archives and the role of academic libraries and the electronic librarian in acquiring online journals and solutions to providing access. The authors discuss the open access movement and conclude that an electronic prints archive would complement traditional means of scholarly communication and publishing. Several timely questions are posed, including provision of article-level access to journals, effect on collection management of purchasing from journal aggregators, and MARC as an appropriate, let alone relevant, format for cataloging.
This anthology outlines what librarians are thinking, doing, and planning in the new world of digital resources, in a time of shrinking budgets and increasingly complex access and purchasing arrangements. The contributions range from the theoretical to the eminently practical. Major emphasis is on the management of e-journals, although a chapter on the use of PDA technology gives the collection greater breadth in terms of formats addressed.
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