Feature g Along the way, universities have been
integrating other services including those for ebook, print book, workflows, discovery and subscriptions with some also using local service partners to implement the platform while Ebsco provides the infrastructure and hosts the platform. As Christopher Spalding, vice president
of product management and researcher workflows at Ebsco, also points out: ‘Local regional providers can deliver the solution in the local language, provide local needs, and in this case, use us as a back end. But in the future, there could be, say, some providers in China that might use Alibaba as a back end.’ Open source or not, Jane Burke,
senior vice president, strategic initiatives at ProQuest, is equally confident the pandemic has exacerbated the move to digital library services in the cloud. For her, a case in point is the Leganto course resource list solution. ‘We’ve experienced a terrific increase in the number of customers here,’ she says. ‘Early on in the pandemic several of our Leganto libraries realised that this was the only way that they could offer short-term load or course materials, and this [product] has proven itself all the way through the pandemic.’ Burke is also adamant that cloud-based
services can bring massive efficiencies to libraries by streamlining workflows.
“Cox predicts how library collections, services, spaces and operation will alter profoundly following the pandemic”
‘The ability to have huge databases in the cloud interoperating in a seamless way makes a huge difference... and offers more opportunities for library services,’ she says. ‘We do think that the pandemic has nudged people to where they need to be.’ And as more and more libraries turn to digital content and cloud-based services, Burke believes there will be no going back. She points to an article written early on in the pandemic by Christopher Cox, Dean of Libraries at Clemson University for Inside Higher Ed.
In ‘Changed, Changed Utterly’, Cox
predicts how library collections, services, spaces and operation will alter profoundly following the pandemic. For example, he
6 Research Information October/November 2021
David Prosser
Jane Burke
highlights how ‘irrelevant’ circulating print collections have become, the need for mass digitisation and self-service models, his expectation that electronic collections will now grow, the rise of open content and educational resources, the need for online teaching and research support, and much, much more.
‘I think that if you look at what the permanent shifts are going to be as a result of the pandemic, then hybrid learning or remote learning is here to stay,’ says Burke. ‘There’s going to be continuing greater demand for ebooks over print books – at ProQuest the curves have crossed and we’re now selling more ebooks than print, and we don’t expect [this development] to revert back.’ ‘This doesn’t diminish the importance
of large print repositories, but I do think for certain kinds of research, teaching and learning, we’ve seen a permanent shift,’ she adds.
But then there’s the ever-dwindling
library budgets. As RLUK’s Prosser points out, many of his library members were awarded emergency funds to bolster remote learning and research early on in the pandemic when buildings had to shut – but are these investments sustainable? Despite a positive outlook on digital collection and virtual service investments, many participating in the 2020 Ithaka S+R US Library Survey reported overall budget cuts and concern about post-pandemic financial recovery. Ebsco’s McEvoy echoes these worries
but remains confident that library priorities have shifted towards electronic provision. ‘[Libraries] are not flush with cash, but they are reorienting planning based on new Covid-related priorities.’ Spalding concurs. ‘I’m not sure that emergency funding will remain but
prioritisation to services especially around remote provision will continue to be core to the mission of teaching and learning,’ he adds. For his part, Lean Library’s Hayes
believes library technology budgets are definitely growing, but reckons content still comes first: ‘I think there is still a long way to go before technology solutions have the same attraction as content... it seems to be easier for a library to justify the budget for content.’ Yet be it for cloud-based ebooks or
technology services, Boston College’s Burns Librarian, Christian Dupont, believes budgets will remain intact for academic libraries. As he puts it: ‘If a university survives the pandemic financially and continues to have students, they have to have a library that offers decent services – that’s part of the deal right now, and they’ll need a budgetary resource.’ According to the Burns Librarian, his
library absorbed the extra costs of the pandemic by freezing positions – people didn’t lose jobs, but neither were they hired. However, he also sees independent libraries that aren’t tied to an academic- or government-related institution in crisis. ‘Whether it’s a direct effect of the pandemic on their usual pool of students who would pay tuition, these institutions are disappearing – liberal arts colleges or some religious colleges are just extremely challenged financially and the pandemic has pushed them over the edge,’ he says. Like many, Dupont has also been eyeing
Folio developments with interest, but again budget concerns draw caution. He believes the days of librarians creating their own open source software are over due to high developer costs, and reckons hybrid models, such as Ebsco-backed Folio, are interesting.
@researchinfo |
www.researchinformation.info
g
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
