-------- Original Message --------
I know this has been mentioned here before, but I think it bears repeating.
Before you withdraw printed books in favor of digital copies, please take
these four things into account:
1. Do you actually have access to a digital copy? Note, for example, that
some documents in the HathiTrust are fully available only to HathiTrust
members. http://www.hathitrust.org/help_digital_library#Download
2. Are the digital copies you expect to rely on complete and accurate?
Many are not. See the article in D-Lib: "The Digital-Surrogate Seal of
Approval: a Consumer-oriented Standard." by James A. Jacobs and James R.
Jacobs. D-Lib Magazine, 2013, 19(3/4).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/march2013-jacobs
3. Do the digital copies you intend to rely on match the needs of your
users? Not all digital copies are created or delivered equally. For
example, Have they been OCR'd? Is the OCR text searchable? Can you copy the
OCR text? Are numbers in tables preserved in the OCR text? Was the original
a large-format or did it contain images, color, fold-outs, maps, etc., and
are those as legible and as easy to use as the original? Do your users
expect to use digital books in a different way from paper (textual
analysis? convert to ebooks? read on tablets? use text-to-voice? etc.) and
do the digital copies you intend to rely on meet the needs of your users?
4. Finally, providing digital copies for enhancing access and use is a good
thing, but please do not assume that it is necessarily a good idea to
discard paper copies once digital copies are available. Print copies were
made to be used in print (size, layout, accessibility, visual context,
etc.). Digital copies of those may or may not adequately preserve that same
usability and accessibility and few digitization projects take the time to
remake the paper into a fully functional digital object designed to be
consumed digitally. The preservation of these valuable paper copies will
continue to be important unless and until many questions can be adequately
addressed (<http://freegovinfo.info/node/3961>). Discarding paper
prematurely, without ensuring the long-term preservation of these historic
documents would be contrary to the spirit of the FDLP and would not serve
either your constituents or the nation.
James A. Jacobs
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