From Discovery to Delivery: Publishing Opportunities on the Semantic Web

This article considers both the physical and online spaces that together comprise the university library and study environment for many of today’s students. It looks at some of the evidence which can be used to inform decision-making in terms of space optimization, eliminating barriers to online access, maximizing collection development budgets both in terms of targeting acquisitions and ensuring that collections are discoverable, and using process improvement techniques in order to maximise staff effectiveness. University Investments In the last four years the University of Aberdeen has invested over £57m in a new University Library, a Special Collections Centre, a Conservation Centre, and a new museum (King’s Museum). Further investment has seen the introduction of a single resource discovery layer which searches all locally-held and subscribed resources in all formats. Finally, there has also been substantial evidence-based investment in online resources, including journal backfiles and eBooks. Over 80% of the current collection development budget is spent on electronic resources. Evidence-based Investment in Online Resources and Tools The evidence base for the targeted acquisition of journal backfiles included the publisher’s own record of click-through attempts from discovered titles to full text. Using this evidence, together with an unfunded priority list of backfiles prepared by academics resulted in significant additional use of the newly-subscribed content. Furthermore, the addition of bibliographic records for the eBook content to the library’s own catalogue resulted in