Is a bookless library still a library?
Cathrine Harboe-Ree
By Cathrine Harboe-Ree, Monash University Librarian
This is the title of an article in Time on 11 July that focuses on a newly opened space at Drexel University called the Library Learning Terrace. The remarkable thing about the Learning Terrace is that it does not provide books - not of the print variety, at any rate. The article does not provide an answer to its question, but it is a question worth answering.
Ten years ago Monash University had very few electronic resources, journals or monographs. We subscribed to 15,000 print journals and acquired about 60,000 new books a year. We became one of the world’s earliest adopters of an e-preferred policy, and today we subscribe to 65,000 electronic journals a year and have 366,000 electronic books. Although our electronic collections are probably only bettered by those resource-rich universities whose collections have been digitised by Google, we still subscribe to 6,000 print journals a year and acquire about 40,000 print books.
We could reasonably expect the electronic book environment to mature at something like the rate that e-journals have done. If the evolution followed a similar trajectory, and we aimed to provide a similar or better overall collection, we could in ten years have access to millions of electronic books, but still be acquiring some tens of thousands of print books annually.
The reasons for still acquiring print books would include:
- The material is not available electronically.
- The material is not available in an appropriate way (for example, there are restrictive download protocols, the presentation itself is not user friendly, or our ability to offer the book to the whole of the Monash community is limited).
- The print version is superior to the e-version (this can be the case for tables and other complex visual material, unless the work is designed for electronic presentation).
- The material is prohibitively expensive in electronic form, even when taking into account the advantage of broader access.
Although we have an e-preferred policy, our guiding principle is to provide scholarly resources in the most appropriate way. As the quantum of electronic material increases, we assess how much physical material should be retained in libraries on campus, as opposed to at our off-site store in Bundoora. We also participate in a number of collaborative projects that allow us to discard material guaranteed to be retained at another library.
We have recently been benchmarking the Library at Monash with a number of Australian and overseas libraries. In order to provide a best-of-breed view we have included Columbia and Harvard in the mix. Both of these universities acquire about 400,000 items a year. Monash cannot realistically compete with them, but it does put our own annual and projected acquisitions in context.
Compared to Amazon, for example, the scholarly e-book environment is restrictive, with many publishers allowing only 10 per cent of a book to be downloaded. Others allow the whole book, but program it to self-destruct after a few days. Publishers are still trying to find viable business models for electronic scholarly monographs, so we can expect barriers to use for some time to come.
The market publishers are most interested in is the electronic textbook market, but this comes with its own complexities, not least the fact that the business model to date has been based on students individually buying their own copies. If the university, through the Library, were to pick up this responsibility, it would mean a huge cost-shifting exercise, and one that would have a profound negative impact on the research collection, unless a means of funding institutional purchasing can be devised.
It is more likely that selling to individuals will continue, either e-textbooks or print versions, and the Library will have to acquire print copies or restricted access e-textbooks.
To go back to the central question, I think we would call a facility without books or regularly rostered staff a learning space rather than a library. The question of who should manage general learning spaces across the university is a different issue, but management of all of the university’s learning spaces, including the libraries, which are by far the biggest learning spaces on each campus, should be done in a coordinated way.
Electronic resources provide wonderful opportunities for improving learning, teaching and research. Monash University is one of the heaviest users of electronic resources in the world, and this augurs well for continuing exploration of innovative ways to engage students and showcase research activity. Nonetheless, a “library” at Monash will include a sizeable proportion of print material for some time to come.