As national libraries have evolved and grown over the centuries, it is clear to see that the constant challenge for them has been the ability to acquire more space for storage and housing ever growing collections. As most national libraries require legal deposit of all items published in the nation, and have done so with varying levels of enforcement dating back centuries, collections rarely remain static and continually expand.
In the previous section looking at the physical buildings of five of the worlds most prominent national libraries, the challenge of storage was usually met by simply constructing additional buildings. While this may continue to happen, we also see the move toward digitisation and the challenges which are associated with it including the preservation of electronic resources in the face of rapidly changing technology.
British Library
Rushton (2005) writing in The Bookseller, discusses how the British Library extended their legal deposit responsibilities to include digital material in 2004. The following year, it then set digital archiving of material at the top of its agenda in response to the conservation and preservation needs for an increasingly electronic collection. Statistics from research carried out by Electronic Publishing Services predicts that by 2020, 40% of UK research monographs will only be in digital format. It will no longer be just the physical storage space challenge but in addition the costs, time and 'web of logistical problems' involved with transferring digital material to new media every three to four years to preserve the information will be the challenge for national libraries in the 21st century.
The BL is also using many Web 2.0 tools including blogs. There is a comprehensive list of blogs written by curators and staff of the library covering a wide range of topics.
Bibliotheque Nationale de France
BNF has struggled with numerous problems throughout the twentieth century according to Johnson (1970) including crowded conditions, new book stacks where ever possible, opening new reading rooms and moving bulky, rarely used items off site. The construction of the Francois Mitterrand Library in the 1990s greatly increased the space available but there remains ongoing re organisation. The BNF is currently organised into collection based departments with the fourteen departments spread across five sites;
The François Mitterrand Library (Site François-Mitterrand)
The Richelieu Library (Site Richelieu-Louvois)
The Arsenal Library (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal)
The Opera Library (Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra)
Maison Jean Vilar
Even so, there is continual expansion and renovation ahead. The library's website details the current works being carried out at the Richelieu Library. Described as the 'historic cradle' of the BNF, Richelieu Library requires works to improve the preservation conditions for the national heritage collections, ensure safety of persons at the Library as the 18th century building has deteriorated and make the Richelieu as a major centre for research.
As well as dealing with the constraints of physical space, the BNF is also aware of the issues and challenges ahead relating to digital archiving and electronic material. A study was conducted in 2010/1 looking at internet archives and the issues around being able to in some way maintain a 'memory' of the web and exploring ways to preserve and share the constant flow of information which may seem 'impossible' and 'paradoxical'. Details of the study can be found on the website as well as a short video that looks at the BnF and what it does.
These are the 'big issues' for national libraries of the twenty first century.
Library of Congress
As previously discussed, the Library of Congress now occupies three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington as well as having off site storage facilities. The task of housing, maintaining, conserving and preserving 147 million items requires almost 4,000 staff and is carried out with an annual budget of US $750 million as at 2011.
The growth of the collection is relentless with materials coming to the library through acquisitions including agreements and exchange arrangements existing with over fifteen thousand foreign governments and research institutions. In 2006, over 31,000 items would arrive daily at LC. In contrast to the other national libraries I have looked at, LC does not hold a copy of every book published in the United States. It is not a library of legal deposit except for the years 1870 - 1909. But despite this, the collection is enormous.
This video shows the extent of the digital collection at the LC and talks about the ongoing process of digitisation.
As with BL and BnF, LC is also acutely aware of the challenges ahead regarding the storage and preservation of digital material. Rosenberg (2009) writes that in 2009, the Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation program announced a "one year pilot program to test the use of cloud technologies to enable perpetual access to digital content". This type of cloud storage appears to be one way in which libraries may be able to cope with the storage issues associated with the digitisation of their collections.
National Library of Russia and Russian State Library
The National Library of Russia is also undertaking a program of digitisation, increasing their digital content as well as renovation and reconstruction of buildings as they review the long term preservation of a huge collection. The annual report for 2009 details the plans for construction to increase storage space and the size of the digital collection which stands at two terrabytes.
The Russian State Library is leading the way in Russia in terms of 'going digital'. The website lists the projects the library is involved in as it continuously adds to its digital stock which in 2009 stood at four hundred thousand documents. Another major project begun in 2003 is the Digital Dissertations Library (DDL) which by 2011 had 650,000 full texts of dissertations.
It is apparent then that the major national libraries of the world are embarking upon strategies and projects aimed at keeping pace with their ever increasing need for storage of their collections. In the twenty first century this will mean the continuation of digitisation and the use of new technologies to store, conserve and preserve the library's collections in primarily digital format.
References
Rushton, K 2005, 'Preserving the present: digital archiving is a huge challenge for the British Library', The Bookseller 5186, pp. 20-21, General OneFile, Gale, viewed 18 October 2011.
Johnson, ED 1970, Histories of libraries in the western world, 2nd edn, The Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J.
BnF 2010, Why renovating Richelieu library?, viewed 18 October 2011,
<http://www.bnf.fr/en/bnf/renovation_work_richelieu/a.why_renovation_richelieu_library.html>
Chevallier, P & Illien, G, 2011, Study into the internet archives at Biblotheque nationale de France, BnF, viewed 18 October 2011,
<http://www.bnf.fr/documents/internet_archive_study.pdf>
Office of Inspector General 2011, Library of Congress, viewed 18 October 2011,
<http://www.loc.gov/about/oig/>
The collections 2006, Library of Congress, viewed 18 October 2011,
<http://www.loc.gov/loc/legacy/colls.html>
Rosenberg, D 2009, 'Library of Congress test drives cloud storage', news.cnet.com, CNet news, 14 July 2009,
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10286280-62.html.>
VOAvideo 9 October 2009, U.S. Library of Congress' Digital Collection One of World's Largest, viewed 19 October 2011,
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylFlAQZ0piU>
Annual Report to CDNL 2009, CDNL, viewed 19 October 2011,
<http://www.cdnl.info/2010/CDNL_2010_-_country_report_RUSSIA_-_National_Library_of_Russia.pdf>
Projects 2011, Russian State Library, viewed 19 October 2011,
<http://www.rsl.ru/en/s35/>
Causes and aims of the DDL RSL 2011, Russian State Library, viewed 19 October 2011,
<http://diss.rsl.ru/?menu=aboutus/48/&lang=en>
Research Process
For this sub topic, it was useful to use mainly online resources as the most current and up to date information could be obtained this way. The official websites of the five national libraries studied here, provided the most current details especially in terms of digitisation programs and construction and renovation projects with the aim of achieving more storage for continuously growing collections.
Journal articles were valuable as digitisation is a topical subject of recent years with much written about it especially in library and technology publications as well as information from general news sites.
There was a lot more I would cover on this topic of digitisation, conservation, preservation and the future direction of the national library in terms of technology but this would require a greater time frame.
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