Mass digitization and its impact on interlending and document supply

Abstract

Purpose: The paper describes the complex landscape of mass digitization projects and their impact on interlending and document supply. The amount of library material available online is staggering, but still at very early stages in terms of discovery tools. Without a centralized source to search digitized collections from these projects, it is important to understand their goals and distinctions between the services they provide.Design: The paper analyzes the history, goals and achievements of the mass digitization projects. It also looks at the sites that aggregate digitized materials from these projects and their interfaces for providing access. Findings:The amount of library collections now digitized has reached numbers unimaginable even just a few years ago. The impact on interlending and document supply will likely be limited in the near term, since much of interlibrary borrowing is for materials published in the past decade, and much of the digitized content from this period is restricted in Google Book Search, the only mass digitization project to undertake digital conversion of copyrighted material. End users will be able to discover materials of interest in new ways, but are likely to need or want to see the print source for recent publications. Practical implications:Library staff members need to understand these projects and how they differ from one another in order to provide optimal service to their readers.What is original/value of paper: The paper is a guide to negotiating the landscape of mass digitization, with an overview of the projects and their goals and accomplishments, with analysis of the impact on interlending and document supply. IntroductionThe number of books and journals digitized in the past few years and now available online has grown exponentially, with corporations such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, and of course Google, funding projects to digitize hundreds of thousands, even millions, of volumes. The idea of having millions of digitized books online was unthinkable even 7-8 years ago, yet that has happened and the amount of digitized materials will continue to grow as a result of these mass digitization projects. The impact of these projects on libraries and interlending and document supply (ILDS) is still very unclear, although

Open access and document supply

“…The project manager at the California Digital Library, Perry Willett (2009), observes that because of mass digitization projects some services have dropped, especially photocopies (non-returnables), while others increased, such as interlibrary book lending. Those items not in the public domain are only partly available on the web, in the form of snippets, and snippets may be good enough for citations but not for reading [5].…”

Interlending and document supply: a review of the recent literature: 68

“…The landscape is changing rapidly, mostly due to the Google's unprecedented efforts in digitizing millions of books and forging partnerships with publishers and rightsholders. This turbulence will stabilize, and one can foresee a day when researchers, students, and common readers will have online access to a wide array of recent publications, either provided at no cost or through subscription services from their local libraries” (Willett, 2009). The growth of distance learning has been facilitated by IT developments.…”