I said:
>It may be a tired old excuse, but many administrators accept it.
I should have thought to add that at least a score of the provincial
and federal government libraries for which we once catalogued have
been closed, with the Internet as excuse. The books were either
discarded or scattered among staff offices.
One was a fisheries library, closed just before Exxon Valdez, with
never published studies on the effects and remediation of oil spills.
Another was a forestry library, just before some major forest fires
due to climate change.
We don't know about US state and federal libraries, but there are some
US small libraries from whom we have not heard in some time, as well
as two in China. (Increasingly e-resource aggregators and publishers
are replacing libraries as clients.)
Law firm libraries seem to be immune to the trend. It astounds me that
Toronto law firms in spitting distance of each other all purchase the
same books. The Boston (Social Law) and Vancouver (Court House) joint
law libraries seem a less expensive solution to me, reducing clients
for us though they do.
It is difficult to be optimistic. Combining libraries, e.g., school
and public, comunity college and public, might save money as do the
joint law libraries. I don't see how the proposed changes can be paid
for.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
