A Handbook of Digital Library Economics

2

Sustainability

Abstract.

Chapter 2 considers the fundamental issue in digital library management and development: that of sustainability. It provides a definition of the term and looks at the basics of a sustainable approach, drawing on the authors’ own research, key relevant literature and the case studies.

Keywords

digital library development

digital library management

sustainability

Introduction

This chapter and the ensuing case studies look at how best to make digital libraries, collections and services economically viable and financially sustainable, drawing on research and experience to date. John Robinson describes some of the challenges of ensuring sustainability:

Librarians have always been engaged with the problem of sustaining ...