A study, funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, was undertaken in 2000‐2001 to give an up‐to‐date view of the current experience of outsourcing and externalization in libraries, museums and archives. Case studies of purchasers recognized as pioneers in the...

In recent years libraries worldwide have been affected by an uncertain financial environment in which resource buying has been restricted, causing them to look at ways of extending their purchasing capabilities to compensate for reduced budgets. In the UK, the British Library Research &...

Purpose – This paper is a thought experiment that investigates the possibilities of moving from the typical “just-in-case” model of managing legacy collections of printed monographs to a centralised “just-in-time” model. Design/methodology/approach – Reliable published statistical...