Digital Information: Order or Anarchy?

If the vision for the future of digital information is order, ease of access, discoverable resources and sustainable business models, how might this be achieved? What might go wrong to bring about a state of anarchy? In an information environment shaped by an ever growing and persistent demand for more and more digital content from every direction, it has become increasingly important that publishers, libraries and information professionals understand the challenges and opportunities of the Google environment. This book addresses these issues and carves out a strategy for the future of digital information. Put together by an international, cross-sectoral team of contributors, each authored chapter provides a snapshot of where we are now and considers how the barriers might be overcome and what the digital information environment might look like if they are – or indeed are not – addressed. The key sections include: resource discovery; e-books; scholarly communications; digitizing the past; who owns the content in the digital environment; e-learning; a publisher’s view; and, the vision for the future. This book is essential reading for all library and information professionals as well as for researchers and library students. It will also be of interest to publishers wishing to reconcile their own digital strategies with those of both information consumers and providers.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: digital information, an overview of the landscape
Chapter 2 Scholarly communications: the view from the library
Chapter 3 Scholarly communications: the publisher’s view
Chapter 4 E-books and scholarly communication futures
Chapter 5 Digitizing the past: next steps for public sector digitization
Chapter 6 Resource discovery
Chapter 7 Who owns the content in the digital environment?