The way users search for information has changed fundamentally due to Google, and those who manage information resources have to move with the times. Woodward and Estelle provide a useful overview of the current state of the digital revolution and its impact on academia, publishers, bookshops, public and national libraries. They highlight specific issues from the other six papers in this collection to illustrate the threat that Google poses how to benefit from it and generate more digital resources rather than fewer.
Articles written by a team of international contributors examine major issues and develop a strategy for the future of digital information by providing a snapshot of the current scene and discussing barriers to success and how these might be overcome. Three papers on scholarly communication focus on its evolution: Anderson talks about the crisis for libraries on searching, finding and budgeting; Russell presents the publisher's view, but restricts it to scientific publishing; Steele looks at e‐books, textbook publishing, and challenges for twenty‐first century scholarship.
Dunning raises issues on digitising the past and next steps for public sector digitisation, such as sustainability, barriers to the diffusion of digitised content, and the development of new tools for content sharing. He calls for more openness so that digitised content can be dispersed on the internet.
Stone looks at traditional methods of resource discovery and next‐generation systems that are entering the marketplace. He talks about the simplicity of Google that is so attractive to users, as it delivers well on some primary resources (but less so on secondary resources that are used by universities for research purposes). There is still a need for flexible, interoperable resource discovery systems based on open‐source software. In the final chapter, Mossink and Estelle discuss various aspects of intellectual property and ownership of content in the digital environment.
Issues raised in this collection clearly illustrate that technological advances are overtaking traditional roles of the information profession, as Google has made inroads into the document‐finding role of libraries by distributing information easier, cheaper and faster. Public libraries must seek new ways to promote services by responding more to the needs of local communities they serve. National libraries need to explore new ways to collect and preserve information and knowledge in digital form for perpetuity, including legal deposit, funding for technical obsolescence, and providing access for users.
Bookshops will need to re‐invent themselves by offering different services, selling specialist books and providing print‐on‐demand facilities. The publishing industry faces the greatest challenge with Open Access, but publishers too must apply technology to widen access to scholarly material and innovate discourse. Traditional library services are declining, and the digital library is soaring, but there may still be a social need for study space, group projects, advice and friendship, so according to this book all you need to do is to focus on the user, adapt and survive.
