Web 2.0

Week 6
Step 15

With the way technology and the information resources are going, may we can down size our libraries now that the books have all left?
Articles as "just in case" make the future very interesting.

The “just in case” collection Crazy as this may sound, the time has come for us to look skeptically at the very idea of a library “collection.” Building a comprehensive collection of materials that anticipates the user’s every need (without providing wastefully where no need exists) has always been problematic, but it was an approach that made sense when information was available only in print formats, and was therefore difficult, expensive and slow to distribute. But it no longer makes sense to collect information products as if they were hard to get. They aren’t. In fact, it may no longer make sense to “collect” in the traditional sense at all. In my library, we’ve seen a 55 percent drop in circulation rates over the past twelve years, making it harder and harder to justify the continued buildup of a large “just in case” print collection. As a Web 2.0 reality continues to emerge and develop, our patrons will expect access to everything – digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. You think they can’t have everything? Think again. This may be our great opportunity