Academic libraries need to evolve to continue to meet the needs of their users in an open-access world, reports Sian Harris

Some snippets from this article:

"A big potential change for libraries will be the effect of OA on allocation of university budgets.."

.. still a strong culture of mistrust and misunderstanding about OA amongst researchers and that communicating with researchers and institutions about it will be an important function for libraries..."

"Managing metadata will be very important for good discoverability but functions such as metadata management and preservation are likely to be done on a web scale rather than on an institutional level, they noted. Libraries are also well placed to – and in many cases already do – manage institutional repositories...."

 " Value will be added by digitising and making available unique collections and libraries will increasingly need to work together and share functions and services...."

"While research librarians have been amongst the strongest advocates of OA models, the implications of these models for research libraries and their future role in supporting the research process are less well understood,..."

Academic eBooks and the User Experience (not an easy road!)

After our frustrating experience with the latest e-book we have purchased I found that the highlighted sentences (below) from  this article summed up my own feelings on e-books in the RU Library!
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"....With the price of textbooks rising, and institutions building their space in the online learning environment, it’s reasonable to expect an increase in the number of eTextbooks on our syllabi. For those institutions that purchase textbooks for reserves, the lending issue takes on an even more immediate concern. With Ingram’s VitalSource platform delivering 80,000 digital textbooks in 17 languages to 1.6 million students and faculty at 6000 campuses in 180 countries (according to The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections), we will need to figure out ways of making eBooks work in the academic research process more seamlessly.
We are ten years in to the eBook revolution and we’ve learned a lot. Unfortunately, most of the tools on the market are designed to silo users into a branded experience with a specific vendor-driven tool. Big companies have big reasons to keep users in their walled gardens. Being aware of the issues is one thing, but we, as academic librarians, need to find ways to ensure that the needs of the academic researcher do not get lost in the currently consumer-focused marketplace."

So what is an unglued ebook? (interesting initiative)

An unglued ebook is an already-published book that's been rereleased under a Creative Commons license, after obtaining permission and compensating the rights holder.

see this site