The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
Are there any academic libraries that have gone completely virtual (book-less) with the entire collection digital/online? Is this actually possible?
Suzy D.
I think this is partly going to depend on how you define an academic library. If you mean a library at a university, then I would doubt that there are yet any completely book-less libraries.
With that said, I think there are a range of institutions, like the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, International Children's Digital Library, or the World Digital Library that have independent existences, in many cases as their own non-profit organizations, and clearly act as academic libraries.
In this case, I would also likely consider something like the Wikimedia commons as a potential kind of digital only academic library.
The nearest thing to is possibly the library at the University of California-Merced.
I don't know how scale-able this is for a university, but Cushing Academy, a college prep boarding school (grades 9-12), went completely digital in 2009: http://www.cushing.org/library. There was a lot of backlash, but considering that they're still paper book-free, I'd say there is a high degree of success.
I have heard (sorry no stats on this!) that the majority of grad students don't ever step foot in physical libraries, relying instead on digital resources, and that most of the undergrads use the library for the computers, printers & atmosphere (easier to study in a 'study' space).
I think that this might be more possible for some academic libraries than others. Perhaps for hard sciences it would work, as books may be nearly out-of-date as soon as they are printed. I don't think it would be practical for music libraries (nothing to take the place of sheet music yet), and academic libraries associated with liberal arts or other heavy reading curricula (students still seem to prefer printed material when they have many pages to read).
To answer the second question, I definitely think it is possible to create a fully digital library. With the growing number of publishers who can supply materials in e-pub, there is an opportunity to acquire these formats instead of the traditional print based ones. E-pub is a more useful format than PDF, as it can be used by various devices and allow for highlighting, notes, etc.
For older books, whilst some can be found on Internet Archive, Google books, etc. there are many that are not. Google's attempt to digitize this type of material has been repeatedly challenged and stalled, and even with both sites mentioned (Internet Archive and Google), the existence and quality of the e-pub is not neccessarily there.
But there are opportunities and partnerships that could assist.
For example, to get synthetic voice or braille versions, a text file or an e-pub file must first be created. So if all the books that have been transformed for blind/vision impaired people are able to be accessed and these files used, this reduces down the number of books that require scanning.
Another example would be sharing of e-pub files between universities, so that any public domain/orphan materials created in engineering could be 'swapped' with another institution who scanned 'chemistry'. This would comply with copyright and allow for individual departments to acquire a digital collection slowly but surely.
For some areas, I would question whether the material is suitable for digitization, such as art books; but by doing this slowly, it could be a learning process to see what works and what doesn't.
I run a library that's about 90% digital. It's one room on a small regional campus. We're blessed with access to great online resources, so it works well.
One of the main reasons I still have books is because the patrons and campus staff expect them. I often refer to them as "window dressing" - a way to make people realize this isn't just a computer lab, but also a library and a place to do research.