Hybrid libraries

The first identified use of the term hybrid library was in 1996 by Sutton. However it was almost simultaneously coined by Rusbridge, then Programme Director of the Electronic Libraries Programme in the United Kingdom, who popularised the term and with whose name it is now associated. Although largely confined to Higher Education, it is likely that the concept will spread to other types of library.
The term has been used rather loosely in the literature – even as a synonym for digital libraries. Two distinct interpretations are in common usage, the first location dependent and the second collection dependent. In the first, a hybrid library may be described as a physical library in which seamless, integrated access is provided to all the resources available to that library, irrespective of medium or location – sometimes known as a one-stop shop. As a separate strand of definition the hybrid library is used more specifically to describe the integration of electronic services into a more coherent whole, irrespective of their location. A similar meaning is conveyed by the term Gateway Library, sometimes used in the USA, while the process involved is often if jocularly referred to as Clicks and Mortar and appears to be in the process of being superseded by the interest in and increasingly commonly used term personal portals. In the latter case it is often associated with the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER), which provides a range of shared services – middleware, content, resource discovery etc. – which can be assembled to meet local needs.