Monograph Solutions A National Monograph Strategy ID_No:73 "On the Cost of Keeping a Book",,, by Paul Courant & Matthew Nielson, 2015 Quote from conclusion: It makes the argument that the costs are high and that they sharply increase with the practical usability of a book. As we have seen with a number of journals, it is possible to substitute digitized print works for the original print (while keeping, as in the case of JSTOR, a set of original print copies). The savings in terms of space and the increase in functionality are parallel to the arguments made in this paper. If the cost of digitization is less than the difference in present value between print storage and digital storage, adding back in the cost of maintaining a shared print archive, there will be a net gain to the university sector of digitizing print collections and using the digitized versions for access. For most of our estimates of the cost of ebook and pbook storage, these conditions would hold. If another party, for example, Google or the Internet Archive, under takes the digitization and provides the access, the argument becomes all the stronger. Finally, we note that the argument in favor of moving toward digital versions of books and sharing both electronic and print collections is further enhanced when we recognize that university libraries tend to be located on prime real estate, and that there are uses of central campus stack space—for classrooms, study, offices, and enhanced library services, among others—that would be far more valuable than using that space to store materials most of which are used rarely, provided that access to the materials in aggregate could still be provided reliably. ID_No:74
Monograph Solutions A National Monograph Strategy ID_No:73 "On the Cost of Keeping a Book",,, by Paul Courant & Matthew Nielson, 2015 Quote from conclusion: It makes the argument that the costs are high and that they sharply increase with the practical usability of a book. As we have seen with a number of journals, it is possible to substitute digitized print works for the original print (while keeping, as in the case of JSTOR, a set of original print copies). The savings in terms of space and the increase in functionality are parallel to the arguments made in this paper. If the cost of digitization is less than the difference in present value between print storage and digital storage, adding back in the cost of maintaining a shared print archive, there will be a net gain to the university sector of digitizing print collections and using the digitized versions for access. For most of our estimates of the cost of ebook and pbook storage, these conditions would hold. If another party, for example, Google or the Internet Archive, under takes the digitization and provides the access, the argument becomes all the stronger. Finally, we note that the argument in favor of moving toward digital versions of books and sharing both electronic and print collections is further enhanced when we recognize that university libraries tend to be located on prime real estate, and that there are uses of central campus stack space—for classrooms, study, offices, and enhanced library services, among others—that would be far more valuable than using that space to store materials most of which are used rarely, provided that access to the materials in aggregate could still be provided reliably. ID_No:74
NMSG-lit-search.docx