From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2019 10:58:23 -0700
Subject: The future (and present) of print
Because it's Harvard, it's big news, and 90 million is a big number,
no question:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/06/harvard-library-joins-forces-to-bring-90-million-books-to-users/

The article is happytalk for an alumni magazine, so it leaves mainly
to the side the interesting questions.  (1) How efficiently can the
institutions now share selection/acquisition so as to save money all
around and still maintain broad coverage?  That's proven to be hard
work in the past for generations of attempts to do better cooperative
collection development.  (Ask a roomful of allied research library
directors to think about CCD again and they mostly groan and turn
away.)  (2) How does this best scale past what is the most wealthy and
privileged group of librarians in the history of the galaxy?  How do
we imagine next steps occurring:  more affinity groups of about this
size?  Do the groups then ally with each other?  Merge?  Charge
outsiders for services?  (3) Harvard-style shelving repositories
typically have a huge carbon footprint -- air-conditioned to a point
where the staff who go into retrieve books keep down parkas handy
year-round.  That already makes less sense than it seemed to when the
repositories were invented, but take the clock forward ten or twenty
years.  What will the traffic in and out of those buildings be like?
What will Sarah Thomas's successor's successor's successor say when
the provost's successor's successor's successor comments on the dollar
and climate costs and expresses the hope that all 90 million of those
print books -- in 2040 -- are getting a lot of use?

Jim O'Donnell
ASU