Off-Site Storage: “Nova Scotia University Libraries Move to a Books-on-Demand Model”

From The Globe and Mail:

A consortium of the province’s university libraries [Novanet] is pressing ahead with a proposal to craft a central repository that would house about a fifth of their collections, freeing up badly needed space. Most of some two million offloaded books, journals and other holdings would still be accessible through the central bank, but perhaps half a million duplicates would be ditched.
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The repository plan is popular among Nova Scotia’s academic librarians, but detractors worry that under its delivery-on-demand system, library users will have a harder time making a surprise find among a sea of shelves.
“What people will tell you we’re losing is the ability for serendipitous discovery while browsing through the stacks, because it’s often the book that you see four books away from the one you were looking for that sparks the idea,” Ms. [Donna] Bourne-Tyson [Dalhousie University’s head librarian] said. But digital software for scrolling through catalogued book covers may offer a solution.

Read the Complete Article
See Also: Nova Scotia University Libraries Discuss Building Central Storage Facility (December 12, 2013)
See Also: List of Novanet Member Libraries
See Also: Take a Look at the New E-Bookshelf From DPLA, Browse/Access More than 1 Million E-Books (Also Available for Harvard Library)

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