The Reference Collection: From the Shelf to the Web

Citation

van Impe, J. (2006), "The Reference Collection: From the Shelf to the Web", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 40 No. 4, pp. 401-404. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330610708024

Anyone interested in the future of reference publishing and collection development should, and must, read this groundbreaking publication. Although one can question the necessity of compiling already published articles in an additional, separate publication (on paper), it is in this case very justifiable to do so: the sometimes wild and unpredictable evolution of reference works from print to digital deserves extra attention.

It is an excellent introduction to the evolution of reference collections, digital versus print, library assignments, “cyber‐plagiarism”, ready reference web sites, federated search tools, digital reference sources in the humanities, the sciences, the medical sciences, business, the social sciences and education. The digital reference world is here, and will keep on growing at a fast rate.

However, as the devil's advocate, I do have a few buts. The focus is far too much on the Anglo‐Saxon world, Europe seems to be a very distant planet. The Global Village speaks many languages, also in reference. The almost religious vigour with which the digital world is being defended could lead to minor or major disasters, within the publishing world, but also within the world of academic libraries.

When microfilm broke through in the 1950s and the 1960s, this revolution was welcomed as a miraculous solution. It would become possible to store more information than ever before in less space than ever before. The growth of stacks would finally come under control. A lot of money would be saved, and in the name of progress many paper collections (newspapers in particular) were destroyed after having been microfilmed. Decades later we are beginning to realise the enormous damage that has been done to our scientific and cultural heritage. These “old” arguments should ring a bell today.

A few years ago we were offered a complete set of the Catalogue Générale of the French Bibliothèque Nationale and a complete set of the General Catalogue of Printed Books of the British Library, for free. We jumped in our library van and picked them up somewhere in Germany, feeling lucky because we were able to replace our own worn out copies.

And what about the National Union Catalogue (NUC), has it become obsolete? Should we just dump this vast amount of paper? I think not. The NUC still contains data that will never be reproduced in a digital form because of the incompatibility of its many extra fields of data with the standard digital ones. I am referring to the handwritten information it contains, for example the date and place of birth of an author, the fruits of investigation by thousands of anonymous librarians during decades, from all over the US.

Another fine example is the digital edition of the Belgische Bibliografie/Bibliographie de Belgique (1875‐2006). Large parts of its digital counterpart are a disaster area, just like so many microfilms made in the 1950s and the 1960s. All the extra information the paper version contains has been left out, for example the address and the names of the editors of an important cultural journal from 1927, not to be found in the journal itself.

By that I just want to make clear that researchers, especially in the humanities, want all the data they can lay their hands on, preferably at the lowest cost possible. During the past ten years as a reference and collection development librarian in the humanities, no researcher has ever asked me: “I am looking for that kind of information, and it must be in a digital form.” No, they just want to increase the level of their research, they want their beef, they demand content, they demand quality, be it in printed or in digital form. So our first concern, as librarians, should be: can we offer the quality and the ocean of knowledge a diehard researcher is constantly looking for, or do we just want to be the book‐keepers of a company, defending the interests of the shareholders?

Commerce has an ever‐increasing influence on research. Until recently, it was the government's and the academic world's almost sole responsibility to build up reservoirs of raw data and research results. So researchers could profit from it at no cost at all, or at least at a very low cost, getting value for the taxes they are paying. I am afraid, and it is already happening, that pure commercial intentions from a growing number of companies, will bring down the quality of research and education. Already today the interlibrary loan services are either decreasing their services, or increasing their prices, because they can no longer cope with the spectacular rise in demands; leaving behind frustrated researchers, with empty wallets, or happy ones with an unlimited credit card. And why should a university with 30,000 students be willing to pay 8,000 euros a year for one single major online reference title?

So the final question is: will we find the courage to demand a considerable increase in our buying power, so that we can offer our patrons the best of both worlds? Instead of quietly transforming our paper budgets into digital ones? And why should we not openly admit that we have to build new stacks, to cover the demands for the next 10 to 20 years? Anyone questioning this point‐of‐view should visit the world's greatest book fair, in Frankfurt, for a dazzling confrontation with this annual tsunami of knowledge, from all over the world.