Lots of libraries have largely stopped buying print in favour of e-books. Certainly the UQ Library favours e-books over print when purchasing. E-books can't get lost, torn, scribbled on or hidden away and they are accessible 24/7 - even from home.

And digitised books are increasingly available online - for nothing - especially older books and out of copyright titles.

But does that mean libraries can go further and actually get rid of a lot of print books, hoping to find digital equivalents in the cloud?

Cloud-sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-digitized Library Environment tries to answer that question. Written by Constance Malpas, Program Officer with OCLC Research in January, 2011, the report's framework was:

The emergence of a mass-digitized book corpus has the potential to transform the academic library enterprise, enabling an optimization of legacy print collections that will substantially increase the efficiency of library operations and facilitate a redirection of library resources in support of a renovated library service portfolio.

which in plain English means Can we source books online, get rid of a lot of print and get our staff doing different things?

The short answer is yes, but there are a few caveats.