Topic 9 – Challenges for Libraries in the 21st Century
The Digital Age
The transition from analog to digital media is redefining the role of libraries. Whether dealing with printed materials or digital publications, libraries continue to serve as vital centers for the circulation of knowledge. However, the digital era brings new challenges and demands that require collaborative solutions:
- Information overload and quality assurance: The sheer volume of digital content makes it increasingly difficult to identify reliable sources. Libraries address this by curating and providing access to verified, structured information in a cooperative framework.
- Technological advancements: Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and digital archiving demand specialized infrastructures. Libraries are increasingly required to collaborate in order to implement and maintain these systems effectively.
- Copyright and open access: Global initiatives such as Open Access and Open Government Data promote unrestricted access to research findings and public data. Their successful implementation depends on expert knowledge in data management, repository infrastructure, licensing, and copyright. National and international coordination through expert working groups is essential.
- Long-term preservation and cultural memory: Digital information is inherently unstable. Libraries must jointly develop and apply long-term strategies for preserving knowledge and safeguarding cultural heritage in the digital realm.
- Education and information literacy: Libraries play a critical role in fostering media literacy. In an era marked by misinformation and disinformation, their educational mission is more important than ever.
Cooperation Creates Strength and Synergies
Collaboration between libraries is not an end in itself, but a necessity. Historically, it has provided the impetus for library automation and today it is essential for successfully mastering the digital transformation.
Joining the Austrian Library Network in 2024 leads to new options with a positive impact in terms of rational and efficient working conditions, but also offer numerous advantages for users.
- With katalog.bka.gv.at, the library holdings become searchable with the possibility to view one's own user account at any time in order to place new reservations, manage loans, renew loans and cancel loans.
- Presentation of selected new acquisitions of the library and digital publications of the EU Publications Office and the OECD via katalog.bka.gv.at.
- Increased visibility of the unique library holdings of the Administrative Library, the Austrian State Archives and the Federal Monuments Office via the search engine of the Austrian Library Network search.obvsg.at.
- Connection to globally accessible (meta-) catalogs (e.g. KVK, the Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog).
- For the administration: increased efficiency in procurement processes. Better data quality through joint control, editorial committees.
- Participation in national and transnational interlibrary loan networks.
- Presentation of digital publications of the public administration, which have been collected by the Administrative Library since 2015 and archived in full text at epub.bka.gv.at. Presentation of other special collections of the library, which are developed in the course of inventory research.