Libraries and Technology; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Digital Preservation

In February 2008, CLIR convened 25 leading librarians, publishers, faculty members, and information technology specialists to consider this question. Participants discussed the challenges and opportunities that libraries are likely to face in the next five to ten years, and how changes in scholarly communication will affect the future library. Essays by eight of the participants—Paul Courant, Andrew Dillon, Rick Luce, Stephen Nichols, Daphnée Rentfrow, Abby Smith, Kate Wittenberg, and Lee Zia—were circulated to participants in advance and provided background for the conversation. This report contains these background essays as well as a summary of the meeting.

Ithaka's 2006 survey of faculty members sought to determine their attitudes related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning and related subjects.  This study affords the opportunity to develop trend analysis of many measurements collected in the 2003 and 2000 faculty surveys. As in the past, Ithaka developed a robust set of disciplinary and other demographic analyses that have allowed them to learn more about how best to serve the needs of different types of faculty members. Findings include;

• Attitudes towards the possibility of a transition away from print format, both for scholarly journals and monographs
• Perceptions of libraries and their value, including specific library functions, and how these perceptions are changing
• Preferences in research practices, including disciplinary differences and changes over time
• Attitudes towards archiving of both print and electronic resources
• Preferences that lead authors to choose among scholarly journals in which to publish their articles, as well as attitudes towards digital repositories

Storing digital data is becoming more essential to the work of librarians, who are trying to think in terms of the next 100 years — a virtual eternity in computer time.