Vast majority of libraries report increase in demand for digital services.
“A new report from Library Resource Guide and Unisphere Research, ‘The Digital Squeeze: Libraries at the Crossroads—The Library Resource Guide Benchmark Study on 2012 Library Spending Plans’, shows an increased demand for all types of digital content in libraries. This should come as no surprise, particularly for those librarians in public service fielding the questions about downloading ebooks and streaming movies. Unisphere Research is the market research unit of Unisphere Media, a division of Information Today, Inc. The research for the study was sponsored by ProQuest.”
From Sue Polanka’s article on TeleRead, “New LRG study- 74% of libraries report increased demand for electronic offerings”
Syracuse encourages positive perspective on DPLA (thanks, guys!)
“We should care because it is exciting! It is an ambitious undertaking that goes outside a traditional (or grossly outdated) model of what libraries should do with their collections and is redefining our role in society to some extent. The world is online and our documents are increasingly born digital. Current and future generations will seek digital materials, and have higher expectations when it comes to accessibility of information because of Google and Wikipedia. Libraries can adapt to this change in information consumption. Google, while it tries, cannot guarantee the caliber of high quality information that a library can. I agree with Martin Gomez when he argued that the DPLA can achieve what Google cannot through connecting the digital assets of libraries online. It is incredible to think of the potential impact in making the collective knowledge and research of major universities libraries and the digitized cultural collections of public libraries, universally accessible to all American citizens online.”
From Dorotea Szkolar’s post on the Syracuse School of Information Studies, “The Digital Public Library of America: Why Library and Information Students Should Care”
The Houghton Rare Books Library at Harvard announces new digitization.
“An exciting array of materials have recently been digitized at Houghton. They include manuscript material from Joanna Baillie, George Eliot, John Keats, Charles Lamb, Percy Shelley, Robert Southey, Alfred Tennyson, Hester Thrale and George Washington. A 15th century breviary and Belgian incunable, multiple musical scores, cartoons, broadsides and more may also be viewed fully online.”
From the Houghton blog, “Recently Digitized Works”