The Digital in the Library: Finding the Mutually Beneficial Synergy

With the value of access to digital resources abundantly demonstrated during the COVID-19 lockdown, enthusiasm for the format is reaching new heights. This chapter counsels restraint, rebutting the argument that skepticism concerning the wide adoption of digital materials into the library is due merely to nostalgia by anti-technologists for a now-bygone age. Despite their obvious usefulness in certain situations, patrons have not responded well when libraries propose to discard legacy print collections in favor of transient electronic formats. To explain this rejection, this chapter argues that libraries are built upon principles of collection development and organization of materials in order to achieve the library's goal of fostering the social good of healthy and lifelong relationships between patrons and networks of information and knowledge, qualities not easily reproduced in commercially acquired digital sets. The arguments offered demonstrate that digital resources provide a complement to the print library rather than a replacement. This fact places a natural limit on the level of acquisition of nonprint items that a healthy library can accommodate. The chapter concludes with principles of collection development to advance the mutual coexistence of print and nonprint formats.