The development of more digital resources suitable for libraries and information centres has brought with it questions about the licensing and pricing of those products; specifically, library managers need to make decisions about charging for digital products in order to incorporate the new products into strategic plans. The intention of this collection of papers (from a conference held in Oklahoma in March 1997) is to highlight key economic concepts and issues vital to entry into the digital environment.
Thomas Shaughnessy’s opening paper provides an overview of the planning and policy issues involved in using digital information. He is, as usual, a model of clarity and common sense when he emphasises the need for planning before commencing work on a digital library. I enjoyed his phrase that compares librarians armed with a scanner to children given a new hammer. Suddenly everything looks like a nail, and we want to digitise everything we can before establishing any sense of priority or even purpose. He warns us to avoid an ad hoc approach.
Kelly Frey’s paper introduces six models for digital commerce and applies them to the information market. This make fascinating reading, even though it is impossible to pick which models are likely to appeal most to publishers and information managers. There are also some very useful “practical” papers in this collection, such as Barbara McFadden Allen on negotiating digital licences, Rebecca Lenzini on combining aggregated and distributed resources, and Donald Simpson on collaborative arrangements for electronic resources. However, returning to Shaughnessy’s point, if the library manager concentrates on the practicalities too quickly, the end result may be interesting yet nevertheless wasteful of resources. For example, if an academic library decides to digitise reserve materials to aid distance learning students, the result can, if planned in advance, become a distributed learning environment of benefit to all students.
It is good to see the important aspect of archiving digital resources given adequate coverage, though there is little about economics in the two papers! In fact, the book’s title is quite misleading, because few papers introduce anything more than a passing mention of economics. This volume is useful for presenting some practical experience with digital products, but it is thin on theory. For a thorough introduction to the economics of information, one should turn to any of Bruce Kingma’s writings.
All the papers are followed by references, but there is no unified bibliography. There is a cumulated index. Although not an essential purchase for library science collections, this is a hot topic in library schools and could be frequently requested if your library does not possess a copy.
