The Role of Digitization in Building Electronic Collections

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The conversion of materials from printed format to digital representations is no longer experimental. Digitization has been demonstrated and its value has been proved by a series of projects, including work at Cornell University, the National Agriculture Library, Elsevier Science Publishers, Bell Labs, the University of Michigan, and the Library of Congress. The cost per page for scanning materials into digital form continues to drop as the process becomes more automated, at least for those classes of material that have relatively uniform characteristics and have not severely deteriorated. Production digitization of other print-like formats, such as microfilm and photographs, remains more experimental (given the great variations in the characteristics of these materials), but some aspects have already been explored through several large-scale pilot projects. The use of digitization technologies to convert analog sound and motion picture recordings to the digital domain is still quite costly and complex. While now used routinely in the entertainment industries (for example, in the production of audio CDs from old master tapes), the process is not yet viewed as a practical method of transforming most library collections. But the vast majority of research library holdings are printed materials, microforms, and photographs. The transformation of these collections into digital form is now within reach, although it represents a massive investment. At the same time, a growing proportion of the new material being acquired by libraries is now available in digital formats, though perhaps at a substantial price premium. The costs of developing systems to provide patron access to digital materials of all kinds is clearly a large and ongoing investment, as is the continued management of these digital materials. Libraries face both opportunities and potentially unmanageable budgetary demands from all quarters. The questions now facing libraries arise less from the availability of technology than out of the development of strategies for collection development and management and supporting resource allocation choices. This paper will outline some possible strategies for approaching the transition to collections that incorporate increasing quantities of digital information, and will offer some perspectives that may help in comparing and evaluating these strategies.