University libraries have been doing what they need to do for years … for example, adding PC labs and Internet access PCs, supporting digital document delivery in their ILL departments and more recently, performing digitization projects for electronic reserves, course curriculum materials, access and preservation. The question is, is there anything missing from current plans? And if so, if a library falls behind is each year’s fresh crop of students an opportunity to catch up?

The best plan involves becoming a hybrid library, both digital and physical paper. An essential foundation of the plan lies in the fact that books are protected by copyright law, but can be copied and scanned for educational use, provided an ‘inventory’ of copies is not maintained. The plan should also leverage the Google system when it comes on-line (unless the courts prohibit scanning ‘for your own use’ or the publishers or authors are able to (and want to) prohibit viewing of excerpts of their books.

There are currently five common ways students and faculty use digital images of books and periodicals for education and research: 1) digital interlibrary loan; 2) electronic reserves; 3) walk-up scanning; 4) course curriculum materials; and 5) electronic access to whole volumes and digital collections.

Digital interlibrary loan. This is a well developed area, albeit with substantial room for improvement. About the only advice that can be offered is to update your systems to improve the quality of the images you provide and save staff resources for use in other areas, and to consider going totally digital as the Ohio university ILL system intends to do.

Electronic Reserves. This is also a well developed area, but with substantial room for improvement, as evidenced by a new electronic reserves product called Ariel and available through OCLC. Opus, KIC and our scanners will improve the convenience and performance of the digitization process.

Walk-up Scanning. More than any other technology or policy, a good walk-up scanning system conveniently accessible to a library’s stacks turns a conventional library into a truly hybrid library. Students and faculty should be able to scan book excerpts or articles on demand, whether they use Google or their library’s lookup system to find some information, then locate it in the stacks or periodicals area. The DLSG’s KIC product speaks for itself as the best of breed for walk-up scanning.

Course Curriculum Materials. Whether distributed electronically or in hard copy form, digitization is a great tool for compiling course curriculum materials. Faculty can seek content using any search engine they prefer, but once located, if they can compile the materials on their personal computer, they can edit, clip, cut, paste and rearrange until they are content. Then distributing to their students is simply a matter of creating CDs, printing hard copy or publishing on the Web in the section for the course. Opus, KIC and our scanners will improve the convenience and performance of the digitization process.

Electronic Access to Whole Volumes and Digital Collections.
For most libraries that haven’t already developed whole volume digitization capabilities, the big question is whether or not it is affordable. The technologies for creating digital collections has come a long way recently and is answering that question favorably these days. Systems that are affordable for most universities are now available that can digitize a book for under $20.

With costs this low, most universities can offer their students, faculty and scholars a new service: creation of special digital collections. These collections can be used in the education process and any volumes that are not copyright protected can be published on the Internet as samples associated with the course curriculum. An entire collection called The Making of America was created by the University of Michigan four years ago when the cost of digitization was much higher. It is a wonderful example of what any university with special collections can produce.

Among entry-level digitization systems, the most appealing is a system that uses staff time made available through efficiency gains in ILL scanning to create fully navigable digital volumes for free! This system includes the Opus digitization workflow system, BSCAN ILL and a WideTEK Super B. The DLSG offers numerous Opus systems ranging from a single-station system with a WideTEK Super B scanner to systems using many scanners from multiple makers that is scalable to as many processing stations as necessary to achieve the desired throughput.