The Swiss National Library

Abstract

In Alexandria 12(3) 2000, as part of a series of pieces on The next ten years in national libraries' the then director of the Swiss National Library, Jean-Frederic Jauslin, outlined some plans and predictions for the next decade, including attempts to achieve legal deposit, gaining more autonomy for the library in order to increase its decision-making powers and working both on conservation of acidic paper and digitization for access. Nearly ten years later, we summarize the results and attempt the same exercise for the next ten years.The library's autonomy has increased as planned, and significant work has been carried out in conservation and preservation of both print and digital material. Plans for legal deposit were not fulfilled but fortunately the long-standing cooperation with the Associations of Swiss publishers has seen continued voluntary deposit of print material and discussions are under way with online publishers to achieve the same.The last ten years have seen a huge growth in online material but little or no decrease in print; in the next years, storage capacity for all media will be required. New underground stacks, inaugurated in August 2009, provide the library with space until 2030 at the current rate of print production. A major challenge will be the increased requirements for electronic storage capacity and preservation; not just for Web archiving and borndigital material but also for the large amounts of digitized material that are being produced.As new formats emerge in the next ten years, the library and others will face its first major tests in migration and/or emulation to secure access over time. The electronic book, long hailed as imminent, seems finally to have arrived. The proliferation of reading devices such as the Kindle may change both collection management and user expectations. Digitization on demand, currently a niche product for the library, will increase if e-readers make loading and access more user friendly. Ten years ago, Google was unknown; today the company is ubiquitous and its impact on digitization and the difficult question of copyright undeniable.The Google Book project has highlighted the difficult areas of orphan works, and varying durations of copyright across countries; these questions will continue to be particularly pertinent for comparatively young institutions such as the Swiss National Library, much of whose collection remains subject to copyright. Cooperation with rights holders will be essential: the Library has already started working in public/private partnerships to digitize and allow widespread access to material, especially newspapers. This form of cooperation will increase over the next years, also in partnership with other Swiss libraries to avoid duplication of effort and share costs in a financial climate that will continue to be challenging.National libraries around the world are seeking increasingly to underline their relevance to all sections of the public, not just a research 'elite'. The Swiss National Library has always been open to the general public and is unusual in that it lends out its more recent material for home use. …