In this blog, we  (Lisa Spiro and Geneva Henry of Rice University’s Center for Digital Scholarship, along with Cynthia Gillespie) will describe ongoing research on the feasibility of establishing a primarily digital research library for a new university.   We will consider a range of questions, including:

• Is it feasible to consider establishing a primarily digital research library to fulfill the teaching and research mission of a new university?
• How much of the material that researchers rely upon is available in a digital format?
• What are the costs associated with digital research libraries?
• What infrastructure will be required to support an e-research library?
• What are the policy implications of a primarily-digital research library?
• Will faculty and students trust digital surrogates as well as born digital scholarly resources?

For more information, please contact Lisa Spiro at lspiro@rice.edu.

Note: The image used in the header is cropped from “Central Library Interior #2″ by darrenstone, available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/darrenstone/395110954/.