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3 votes Vote

Cease digitization projects

Large scale digitization projects were once very fashionable in academic libraries, but have proven to minimal impact on campus learning outcomes and require extraordinary resources both in staff and equipment. It is conceivable there would be no complaints from the larger campus community if we ended these digital services.
(Submitted via Strategic Planning Comment Card)

Hopper_Moderator, 10.12.2010, 13:53
Response from the site administrator
Hopper_Moderator, 14.12.2010
Forwarded to the Strategic Planning Task Force for review.
Idea status: under consideration

Comments

informant, 10.12.2010, 19:29
On the contrary digitization projects promote the utility of libraries collections to those not only on campus but to the global community and seek to raise UT's profile by showcasing our collections, services and expertise. On a local level, we are also providing streamlined access to collections previously hidden, and in an age where digitization is the *only* way many of our incoming students understand research, discontinuing digitization would be a massive step backward.

However, it would be great to see our digitization efforts promoted to the campus community and to make access to our collections obvious and collected in one place. Ideally, creating records the digital collections in the library catalog would accelerate this type of findability.
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lookslikeuptome, 16.12.2010, 20:27
Strategically select our best and keep to a manageable scale: Benson, Human Rights, Maps, Alexander Archive should be the bulk.
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vegan, 17.12.2010, 00:35
180 degrees off- let's communicate to the user base and the funders what we have.
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diderot, 17.12.2010, 01:31
well said Informant. let's showcase those things that distinguish us rather than filling up the shelves with common editions of current publications that are ubiquitous and are increasingly unlikely to be read.
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Commentator, 20.12.2010, 21:21
I wasn't aware that we are engaged in any large scale digitization projects. In our division it was reported a few years ago that digitization operations moved to Technical Services to scale down and focus on library owned materials. I agree with the comments from informant, lookslikeuptome, vegan and diderot, but I think we also need to be careful to continue to keep digitization within bounds going forward
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