Will Books Be Different?

Zatko, Ruzena

Guthrie, K. K. (2012). Will books be different?. Journal of Library Administration, 52(5), 353-

369.

Summary:

This literature provides a lot of coverage on how far we have come with journals for research from the early 1990s up till now. It also covers aspects of books (for leisure) and how the reading patterns changed. The author has extensive background working for JSTOR so he has seen the evolution of trends from the printing of research article trends to now being able to access it from your own home or from anywhere. The paper is broken into two parts: The print-to-electronic transition for journals and the print-to-electronic transition for books. Overall, the focus is on the transition of both mediums and how print and electronic book and journals are looking in the future.

 

Evaluation:

This paper was well written and flowed smoothly. The reason I felt this literature would be important to include is because I wanted to focus on some past history of library trends with research journals and book from then and now. I was very impressed with the insight Gutherie provided that was acquired by his extensive knowledge from his position. What could have be included is a chart demonstrating our reading habits and acquiring of journals, then and now. Also, since Gutherie mentions the demand for articles and that publishers are willing to provide a bundle savings rather than purchasing select titles. However, some libraries lack the funds and cannot bundle. What could have been included is some examples of the size of bundle a well-funded library can buy compared to a low-budget library.

In all, this was informative insight because this was the first mention of the raw, behind-the-scenes of libraries’ eBook acquisitions through publishers and the concerns we often don’t hear about. Overall, libraries are indicating they expect to spend nearly half of their budget on electronic books and changing their model for patron-driven approaches for acquisitions.