British Library predicts 'Switch to digital by 2020'

“Most people are aware that a national switch to digital broadcasting is expected by the end of this decade. Less well known is the fact that a similar trend is underway in the world of publishing: a study by EPS , commissioned by the Library, projects that, by the year 2020, 40% of UK research monographs will be available in electronic format only, while a further 50% will be produced in both print and digital. A mere 10% of new titles will be available in print alone by 2020.

“This is a seismic shift, and one that we – and our partners in the publishing and information industries – need 2020 vision to prepare for in order to maintain Britain’s competitiveness across all sectors, from business to the arts, from science to education and culture.

“Our aim at the British Library is to develop the infrastructure to store, manage, preserve and provide access to digital material in the same way as we do for the ‘physical’ national collection that we and our predecessors have stewarded for the last 250 years. We have worked hard over the past few years to secure the legislation we need (digital legal deposit), work in collaboration with publishers, other libraries and with technical partners to build the necessary systems to ensure long-term access arrangements.”

The British Library’s collection already covers every information format from oracle bones to kilobytes. The Library will build on its work in collecting digital items, digitising existing collections, and archiving websites, to set up the infrastructure to hold the national collection of digital items in the same way as the organisation manages the 160 million item national collection of books, manuscripts, sound recordings, patents, stamps and maps.

“In many ways digital material is more fragile than physical material and if we don’t manage it effectively it won’t survive for future generations. Collecting and managing digital material needs specialist skills. We will apply the skills of the country’s top information management specialists to the digital collection.”

The collection will include both items that were 'born digital' and those items in the British Library collections that have been digitised, such as Shakespeare’s Quartos and 19th Century newspapers. In 2003 the Library led a national campaign in support of a Government-backed Private Member’s Bill to extend legal deposit to electronic materials, including websites. The Library now collects and provides linkages to e-materials from a variety of sources to ensure that global research is rapidly available to UK researchers.

Over the coming year the Library will be using e-journals as a pilot for scoping and testing processes for their legal deposit. The journals will be stored within a secure digital infrastructure. The British Library will also work with national and international partners to further its innovative web-archiving strategy.

“The national digital library is a key part of the UK’s research e-infrastructure,” says Lynne Brindley. “We will develop new tools to help researchers in the digital world. We will be collaborating across the research community to guarantee that both text-based and data-based research outputs are preserved and available for the researchers of tomorrow.”

For further information please contact: Ben Sanderson at the British Library Press Office (telephone 01937 546126, email: ben.sanderson@bl.uk) or Lawrence Christensen (telephone 020 7412 7114, email: lawrence.christensen@bl.uk)

The EPS study on future trends in publishing is available online