Humanities scholarship, the research library and the digital library

Research libraries serving humanities scholars face the increasing expense of providing print-based research collections with declining budgets. Humanities scholars have tended to be unenthusiastic about electronic access to information despite the attraction of OPACs and digitised primary documentation. A small sampling of the views of British academic historians in the summer of 1998 suggests that this resistance is weakening in at least one discipline. The value of digitised resources for teaching is being recognised. Although attitudes towards 'archival' resources on the Internet are much less positive, many scholars will at least contemplate publishing their findings electronically. This movement in attitudes suggests that research libraries can now begin to resolve their resource dilemma by a change of emphasis away from collections towards access to re sources distributed across networks of institutions. The Information Strategy of Leeds Library and Information Services is used to illustrate what this might mean in practice.