The Scientist : Science librarians question cuts:

"However, Tamsin Adams-Webber, president of the Canadian Health Libraries Association (CHLA) and a current librarian at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, told The Scientist that it's incorrect to assume that switching to an electronic format saves money.

Indeed, librarians suggest that budget cuts based on future paid electronic access may instead increase costs. 'With no library to assess needs and coordinate and negotiate purchases and licenses, individual scientists and departments may purchase these resources directly, resulting in expensive duplication, limited or ineffective access, and cost premiums,' Adams-Webber and her colleagues argue in a written response to Health Canada to be posted on the CHLA Web site, and provided to The Scientist. "

This is the bit that has me puzzled. Why, despite all the evidence from other directions that relying soley on electronic access to information actually ends up costing more and in other areas, some people still think that cutting the expense of having a library, with a complement of librarians trained in providing access to the information contained therein, is an economic good thing?
It's as if they can only see the very short vision of the balance sheet being the all important 'thing'. As opposed to actually having an idea of what that balance sheet is for - namely the maintenance of information without which there will eventually be no balance sheet.