Thursday, June 30, 2005

(Almost) All Digital by 2020?

By 2020, only 10% of published material will be print-only, according to the press release issued yesterday by the British Library, announcing the release of their three year strategic plan. I haven't had time to read the plan (post ALA housekeeping) but it looks interesting. Their six strategic priorities:

Strategic Priority 1 - Enrich the user’s experience.
Strategic Priority 2 - Build the digital research environment.
Strategic Priority 3 - Transform search and navigation.
Strategic Priority 4 - Grow and manage the national collection.
Strategic Priority 5 - Develop our people.
Strategic Priority 6 - Guarantee financial sustainability.

I think the BL has redone its web site since the last time I visited. It's way less stuffy.

Thanks to Rafat at paidContent.org for the info.

Addendum at 8pm: Bad, bad Alane. How shaming to have to do this twice in one day. As Walt Crawford pointed out in a comment to this post, I made this error:

The press release doesn't say " By 2020, only 10% of published material will be print-only." It says something much narrower: 10% of UK research monographs will be print-only.

Last time I try blogging at the same time I am trying to recall where the heck I was going on what day for the "taxi" part of my expense report. Chicago must be the only ALA destination that my taxi receipts exceed my food receipts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The press release doesn't say " By 2020, only 10% of published material will be print-only."

It says something much narrower: 10% of UK research monographs will be print-only.

If I said that only 10% of refereed scholarly journals would be print-only by 2020, that certainly wouldn't be the same as saying that 10% of magazines or periodicals will be print-only by 2020. (Not that I'm saying either one.)

Anonymous said...

Nah, no shame: You were neither the only nor the first one to misread the release (it hit LISNews first). An easy mistake to make.

Of course, depending on what you mean by "published" and how you measure quantity, the overall prediction might not be too far off, especially if STM journals (which I believe will be predominantly e-only by 2020) continue to proliferate at a mad pace.

I was going to add a LONG comment about measurements and why that's so, but it's really too long for a comment. If I get time, I'll write that comment at Walt at Random and link to your post.