Image from http://google.com
Dear Google
If it is not already apparent to you, I live and breathe your tools. I own a beautiful Google Nexus 6P phone, whose battery life continues to amaze me. I use GMail, Inbox, Drive, Calendar, Keep, Google+, YouTube, Photos, Maps, you name them, and I use them. It is moot to point out that I use Google search, because, how else does one live anymore? I marvel at all the things you have done and you continue to do, manage to give so much of it away for free, yet manage to make boat loads of money. But, please, can you take care of a few very simple, but very important things first?
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Taken from:
http://goo.gl/XXmJGc%5B/caption%5D
I was at a meeting in Washington DC organized by CLIR. CIOs from liberal arts colleges with merged Library/IT organizations are members of CLIR and meet twice a year. This time around, we included senior managers from each of our institutions also. One of the topics we discussed was “Sharing and Collaboration”.
As I have written before, collaboration is very hard and the types of collaborations we take pride in and celebrate are the so-called “low hanging fruits”. The real ones we have been discussing for long time, such as sharing services and staff simply remains unattainable. So, I thought I will share with you my analysis of factors that contribute to a successful collaboration.
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It is no secret that the use of the libraries has undergone drastic changes and numerous articles have been written on this subject. There are several valuable resources available for understanding the trends and the future of the libraries. I would like to link to a few here that are directly relevant to what I would like to discuss.
Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013 executive summary (the last available survey from them) summarizes some of the key findings on collections:
- A minority of respondents, even at doctoral institutions, believes that purchasing
print books to build research collections is important, while the large
majority believes that building local print collections has declined in importance.
By comparison, the vast majority of respondents see resource sharing
as an important library function and there is ample evidence across institutional
types of the importance of collaborative approaches to serving users’
information needs.
- For journals, the shift from print to electronic collecting has been, from a
budget allocation perspective, nearly completed. Library directors tend to
be more comfortable than are faculty members with the print to electronic
transition for scholarly journals.
- A possible format shift from print books to ebooks appears to be occurring
at a more measured pace, with relatively small projected increases in ebook
spending. Views about the importance of ebooks in their libraries have not
measurably changed over the past three years. With respect to books, library
directors may if anything be less aggressive in moving towards electronic
formats than are faculty members.
Drafting a viable plan for managing the library collections as well as the efficient use of library spaces to meet the emerging needs of the students and faculty are activities that we are engaged in. These are extremely difficult topics on which there are differing views, but this statement generally applies to anything we do in library and technology services! What is important is to have broad, and informed conversations, take into consideration multiple dimensions of the issues and come to a sensible conclusion. Yup, easier said than done, but we are making progress…
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