S. Sugimoto et al. (Eds.): ICADL 2006, LNCS 4312, pp. 531 – 532, 2006. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006 Reskilling Staff for Digital Libraries Naicheng Chang 1 and Alan Hopkinson 2 1 General Education Center,Tatung University, 40, Sec.3 ChungShan N. Rd. Taipei, Taiwan ncchang@ttu.edu.tw 2 Library Systems and Bibliographic Services, Middlesex University, Hendon, London NW4 4BT, UK a.hopkinson@mdx.ac.uk Abstract. In academic libraries, the digital library world has had a profound im- pact on staffing. Academic libraries are facing huge pressure on their staffing lev- els at a time when digital libraries are being introduced. Digital libraries cannot be divorced from ordinary libraries. What skills do traditional librarians need? There is little in the literature on training for staffing for digital libraries. Consequently, evidence from a recent PhD gleaned from research interviews of these digital libraries case studies is included in this paper. This research uncovered a variety of different management and organizational issues and revealed the large cost of personnel in the implementation and maintenance of digital libraries 1 Introduction As part of a study on the impact of XML (Extensible Markup Language) in digital library development, studies were undertaken on three digital library initiatives, which were chosen because of their size and being examples in the global digital library community. These studies included research interviews conducted during visits in September 2002 to three projects which were in different types of library. The Perseus Digital Library (PDL) was selected as an example of a research and development testbed. The University of Michigan Digital Library Services (DLS) represented an academic library (In June 2003 the DLS was renamed Library Information Technology). Its mission is to support a virtual learning environment and preserve campus-wide materials for long-term access. The Library of Congress (LC) National Digital Library Program (NDLP) was taken as an example of a national library project. 2 Expectations for Digital Library Staff There is much more to digitization than scanning data. The non-technical challenges encountered by digital library developers are proving to be elusive, complex and pro- found. Institutions are not looking for people doing routine work but for those who have knowledge of future trends in their professions. Therefore, our view is that librarians in general, following the lead of those in the Library of Congress, are wise to see the future in XML. The results of our investigations of real world library posts discussed in the following paragraphs support our vision of this. We did an investigation using Web job listings in the UK, the US and Taiwan. We targeted academic librarian jobs and computing jobs in the academic sector. Further-