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resource(s) under consideration and should identify responsibilities for these. (IFLA, 2000)
The full text of the IFLA Licensing Principles is available on IFLANET at:
The challenge of becoming "hybrid": Finding the right balance between traditional
and new services
The term "hybrid library", coined in the mid 1990s, was a clear sign of the recognition that
memory institutions in the digital environment have to bridge two different worlds, the phy-
sical and the digital, and to become something different than they were 20 or 200 years ago.
Taken in its full meaning, the term does not mean that libraries just have to add some
new digital services (e.g. online reservation or e-magazines) to the set of services they
traditionally offer to their clients.The challenge is clearly not one of addition but
qualitative, namely to find the right combination and interrelations of the physical and
digital spheres. Librarian Heikki Poriola writes:"Are there really still people who see the
`library' in terms of the previous century's tasks? Developing libraries is about much more
than preserving literature in book form. It is about being centres of information; whatever
the information and whatever its format." (The Finnish Library Journal, 2000)
As Chris Rusbridge, former Director of the UK Electronic Libraries Programme, puts it:
"The name hybrid library is intended to reflect the transitional state of the library, which
today can neither be fully print nor fully digital. As we have seen, in so many cases the
results of adding technology piece-meal are unsatisfactory.The hybrid library tries to use
the technologies available to bring things together into a library reflecting the best of both
worlds." (Rusbridge, 1998)
Beside their traditional holdings and offerings, (major) libraries will have to collect,
organise, preserve and give access to new media (electronic documents and artefacts,`born-
digital' and digital surrogates) and/or direct user to such resources.Yet, for the next decades,
the analogue holdings will remain the core assets of libraries (and other memory
institutions) and their legacy to many generations.Thus, they will continue to use their
tried-and-true methods of making materials accessible to the relevant user groups.Yet,
alongside and interrelated with the physical space, there will develop a `cyber-place', online
services, and virtual communities of interest and practice. Given limited financial resources,
memory institutions will have to find the right balance between these information and
knowledge spheres.
Think big - also in terms of physical storage
Misconceiving the relation between print and online can lead to unpleasant results as for
example the ones the new San Francisco Public Library had to face.The library cost $140
million and opened to the public in 1996. It has been, beside other things, heavily criticised
for not having planned enough space to accommodate new printed material. One reason
for this was that the facility became the home of 400 electronic work stations (with the
infrastructure having a capacity for 700 more). In an evaluation study, one of the objectives
for a reorganisation of the library was formulated as discovering "means to increase space
for future collection growth".
San Francisco Public Library: Post Occupancy Evaluation. <>
Krohnengold, Jay (1996): Pacific Bell Sponsors Opening of San Francisco's New Main Library.