Academic libraries and archives serve a vital role: preserving and providing access to information and texts that enrich education. But this mission faces challenges in an increasingly digital era in which students rely more on online resources.
Physical books and media allow outright ownership. Once acquired, libraries can freely share, preserve and reformat their collections. But digital offerings such as e-books and online journals usually provide only limited licensing, which can imperil long-term educational access.
When students search for an e-book or article online, they might not realise the full text is often licensed, not owned, by their university library. Publishers impose restrictions on allowing downloads, printing, sharing between users or even page access over time. Access depends on ongoing payments to vendors. If budgets shrink, subscriptions lapse and availability vanishes.
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Unlike physical books that remain on library shelves, digital content can disappear instantly. And remote hosting means even librarians cannot preserve or migrate texts to new formats for future access. Our role as stewards of knowledge is disrupted.
This also affects access to born-digital publications such as web content or blogs. Without proactive archiving, online texts simply vanish when servers go offline or sites shut down. UK libraries wanting to collect and preserve vanishing digital works often find themselves stymied by copyright law and prohibitive licensing costs.
Whereas physical media can be freely loaned and reused, digital licensing hinders libraries from fully serving their educational purposes. It also transfers excessive power to publishers motivated by profits more than public access. Campaigns such as #ebookSOS are working to raise awareness of how the high prices and restrictive licences of academic e-books limit access to information, not just in the UK but globally.
Some push back by arguing that the convenience of digital access offsets downsides such as restrictions or impermanence. But studies show that e-books limit absorption and retention compared with physical texts. And students continue to report preferring print for extended reading and study.
Physical books also avoid issues such as digital eyestrain or device costs that exacerbate educational inequalities. Finally, research indicates that our minds best comprehend complex concepts when engaging multiple learning modalities – auditory, visual, tactile. Physical media better enable this multifaceted experience.
Despite this, budget pressures increasingly push libraries towards digital-only models. And publishers keep narrowing licensing terms in the hope of maximising revenues. This shifts the educational cost burden to students and libraries in the form of recurring subscription and platform fees.
The result is students becoming dependent on resources that could functionally disappear overnight because of corporate decisions. This does not serve academia’s role as steward of generational knowledge.
What’s at risk goes beyond textbooks. Primary sources, rare books and special collections offer unique windows into knowledge and history. But only a small fraction of UK universities’ specialised holdings are digitised, if at all.
Physical access restrictions due to Covid brought this into stark relief. Without on-site access, many rare resources were functionally non-existent for remote students and researchers. When the Internet Archive enabled scans of print books to be borrowed digitally during the pandemic, publishers sued to stop this access. This reveals how profit-driven interests often limit public access to information rather than expand it.
Even digitising orphan works (where the rights-holder is unknown) raises challenges around preservation, rights and reformatting costs. A particular quirk of UK copyright law means that unpublished orphan works are collectively protected by copyright until 31 December 2039 and therefore cannot even be displayed, let alone digitised. Estimates as to the scale of these works reach into the hundreds of millions, some items hundreds of years old, hampering access to vast troves of unique cultural resources.
Libraries must consider innovative models that balance convenience and restrictions. Some possibilities include:
– Copyright provisions enabling format shifting of digital texts for archival purposes.
– Revising licensing terms for education to facilitate sharing and preservation.
– Library exemptions from digital rights management (DRM) and copyright limits on digital archiving.
– Public funding to digitise rare printed works and special collections.
– Policies requiring continued legacy access to discontinued academic resources.
– Subsidising libraries to maintain community-accessible print collections.
– Interlibrary partnerships to preserve print equivalents of critical digital resources.
Academic libraries are exploring alternative digital models as well, such as open educational resources (OERs). But print retains an irreplaceable role for in-depth reading and reliable long-term access.
The key is utilising each format’s strengths in a blended model. Print provides permanence and ownership. Digital enables discovery and accessibility. We must avoid an uncritical rush to digitise every text before ensuring licensing terms serve academia’s core mandate – the preservation and transmission of knowledge.
With the proper framework, academic libraries can fulfil this mission. They can leverage digital resources for their searchability while maintaining print equivalents to ensure continuous access. This best serves the next generation of scholars, providing technological convenience without conceding permanent availability to corporate control.
But achieving the right balance requires advocating for education and access-centred policies. Academia must make the case for digital offerings on reasonable terms, not maximising publisher profits. Otherwise, we risk a digital erosion of knowledge entrusted to libraries and archives.
Inclusive access to information enables social mobility, discovery and growth. But convenience must not trump permanence. Libraries and universities serve society, not shareholders. With public-minded digital policies, British academia can harness technology’s potential while safeguarding the enduring availability of knowledge. This promises a richer intellectual heritage, freely accessible to all seeking personal growth.
Caroline Ball is an academic librarian (business, law and social sciences) at the University of Derby.
