How can libraries align preservation and access strategies with their mission?

Libraries can align preservation and access strategies with their mission by prioritizing both physical and digital preservation, investing in technology, providing resources in different formats, and actively involving users in decision-making processes. Libraries can fulfill their mission of preserving knowledge and providing free and equal access to information for present and future generations by striking the right balance between preservation and access.

Libraries were once the centers of knowledge and repositories of intellectual capital. With the early advent of digital technology, they were more empowered by the databases they contained which enabled users to access scholarly articles, dissertations, and other materials difficult to access. It seems the introduction of the World Wide Web (the "Internet") in 1993 marked the beginning of a long decline which is still happening to this day. People of all ages (students, professionals, and those seeking entertainment formats) can retrieve a wide range of materials via the internet. However, I do not believe the end of the library is on hand - what is yet to be seen is its transformation into something new.

I see preservation and access in slightly different “value added” terms within the institution. Collections hold monetary value as a collective asset that can become priceless… that hold values that should be insured for loss. The priceless part is the cultural value depending upon the uniqueness of the collections within the community. Access is the demonstration of the library’s utilitarian value to its community which is also a value-added quality to the institution in how caring you are in creating access to unique material (beyond electronic databases) to your community in multiple modalities.

One of the best access strategies I have experienced was at the library of the University of Liverpool. They have digitized almost every book in their collection, which can be accessed through digital library lending software called Adobe editions. The software provides sufficient privileges to read and copy limited pages, and it's not just limited to e-books. Almost every paper book in the library is available electronically. I believe this practice should be replicated by all libraries.

Digitize and microfilm materials. Put them on the web. Audio books work too. Broadcast them on TV, radio, YouTube. Hold public readings.

AI will definitely present new opportunities to capture, sort, and classify older materials such as records, maps, out-of-print texts, newspaper/journals, photos, and much more. However, the challenge will be that these materials still have to be manually organized and handled for data capture (e.g. scan). It will be exciting to see these older texts and records stored for posterity. I suppose they still do not have enough monetary value to justify the labor required for this task. Hopefully, this will change in the future.

The most challenging face of preservation by libraries is the print and distribution rights. The knowledge kept in books is not searchable, nor can be reproduced as easily as most uncredited misinformation is freely floating over the internet, read by almost everyone, and accepted as an alternative truth. I believe the electronic, open source, access-controlled solutions can remove the barriers to let people help this challenge to the right side.

One area that the library in my university is trying to delve into is research data management (RDM). This is an example of how libraries can leverage the interplay between preservation and access to develop new and innovative services for their communities. Researchers need infrastructure and services to store and preserve their data as well as take advantage of the benefits of data sharing. The library has a great opportunity to facilitate this by building it's capacity to do that through skills and infrastructure development.

Another idea about making preserved books more accessible is to feed them into AI-LLMs as training data, so people can access the content easily, conveniently, and quickly. The practice is already available about current research papers, so it can be easily extended to old knowledge.

Libraries still have social value - collaborative roles to play in the transfer of learning and knowledge. Just because we have coffee makers at home doesn't mean we don't utilize coffee shops. It's not so much the commodity of knowledge that we must consider, its how we interact with it. I believe libraries will reinvent themselves.