The State and Problems of Digital Collection Management of University Libraries in Thailand

ไทย

Abstract

This qualitative study focused on the investigation of the situation and problems of the digital collection management in 4 Thai university libraries. The research sample consisted of 19 respondents purposely selected from librarians and computer system officials. The study employed semi-structured interview forms to collect data which were later analyzed with descriptive analysis.

The findings revealed that 1) digital collection management in the Thai university libraries comprised collection acquisition policy, the establishment of an operation unit responsible for the acquisition, its personnel, budget, and its management model, collection storage, and standard for digital collection  management; 2) the collection acquisition process consisted of acquisition, its storage, standard and metadata for cataloging, access and searching, application technology, and data maintenance ; and 3) there were 5 problems of digital collection management in the university libraries: 3.1) personnel’s lacking of
experiences, electronic expertise, and copyright law knowledge, and the high turnover rates of personnel, 3.2) insufficient budget for journal subscription due to the increasing subscription rates, no negotiation power with journal publishers and subscription agencies due to unfavorable working conditions, supporting budget, staff development, and technological differences, 3.3) lacking of main database for storing and accessing digital academic data for networking and instability of the Internet, 3.4) most of the software could not function and were not compatible with the university working system, 3.5) users’ statistics of database use were not self-retrievable, and the reduction of the digital collection users.