New Subjects, New Communities, New Formats: The Library Collection in the Digital World

This paper provides an overview of collaborative research with the British Library, which aims to develop a concep‐ tual approach to the collection in the digital world, using a case study of collections for social enterprise. Based on this research, the objective of this Lively Lunch session was to facilitate discussion, using audi‐ ence voting and a paper survey, of three broad issues affecting collections in the digital world: • The impact of emerging interdisciplinary subjects. • The challenge of identifying and engaging with potential user communities, including virtual communities. • The growth of new formats, including those informally published online, and their im‐ plications for library collections. This paper outlines the research. Social enterprise is a relatively new interdisciplinary field—business with a social purpose—which draws on much older ideas, for example from the co‐operative move‐ ment, or from the non‐profit sector. This raises questions about how latent existing collections of relevance to these emerging subject areas can be identified and exploited. The communities interested in information about this subject are highly networked and geographical‐ ly distributed and share valuable information re‐ sources using informal online publishing tools, cre‐ ating challenges for traditional collection develop‐ ment and management processes from community analysis to collection evaluation.