An excellent and eloquent reply, David.

What strikes me as interesting is that in the entirety of this discussion,
little mention has been made of one of the more ubiquitous driving forces
for research and publication -- and that is the requirement for
publication to be used in the service of the almighty promotion and tenure
process. I know from my own association with one aspect of 'scientific'
research that studies are often rushed into print with inadequate
population samples, shaky statistical manipulations of data, and shoddy
peer reviews. Some of these studies have appeared in the so-called
prestigious journals and some have been presented at conferences. This has
led me to question the validity of the motivation for a lot of research in
many fields as well as the results. I do not, certainly, mean to denigrate
research and researchers, however, I do like to quote an article in the NY
Times which appeared some months ago (in regards to the AMA publications,
I think) in which the writer stated that if publication were not a part of
the promotion and tenure requirements of academia, about two-thirds of the
world's journals could comfortably cease to exist. The very fact that many
academic P-T committees will not regard electronic publishing as a valid
forum for research further adds to the lumbering and archaic system to
which Mr. Moore refers. Until academia comes up with other criteria for
P-T, we will be saddled with an academic arena bloated with journals, many
of which exist simply as vehicles for publications which are necessary to
satisfy the requirements of academia. Since it seems that journals are a
black hole both in terms of information (good or bad) and in terms of
cost, the hard cold fact remains that no library -- even in the best of
circumstances -- could begin to afford even a smattering of journals in
all of the fields which the library is to support. Hence, librarians must
make decisions, and those decisions must be made in favor of the majority
of the university patrons and not a small vested-interest group (or, more
specifically, one faculty member). If a journal enjoys very little use by
library patrons, there is every justification for cutting it -- if someone
has a real interest in the information contained in that journal, there
are many ways of getting it (I mean, would it be too much to ask that a
faculty member subscribe themselves -- and usually for a fraction of the
cost of an institutional membership????). As electronic and digital
information sweeps over us, libraries are less and less apt to continue to
be warehouses for everything ever published and are more and more apt to
become information managing agencies. If this is a real trend, then its
implications for those adherents to print journals and those who wish to
warehouse them will be many and deep. Librarians and publishers alike need
to look towards the future of publishing -- the real future and not a
stubborn adherence to what has been! -- rather than clinging to a past
which is slipping away even as we speak (to whit: the fact that this
entire discussion has been carried on in electronic form rather than as a
series of letters to an editor!). Accusing university administrators of
stinginess in funding, accusing librarians of being short-sighted in
providing for information needs, and accusing publishers of gouging the
academic community get nobody anywhere other than taking up lots of bytes
and time.

What is needed is an asessment of the system of scholarly communication in
the 21st century: how it will, and already does, differ from what has come
before it and how that will impact the publishing industry as well as the
library industry. What is also needed is an asessment of the evaluative
tools used for granting tenure and promotions to faculty (assuming that
such statuses will continue in academia) and the reliance of a possible
out-moded measurement (i.e., the published article) as a factor in such an
evaluation. We *have* met the enemy -- and it is very possible that it is
*all* of us!!

Peter V. Picerno
<ppicerno@choctaw.astate.edu>

-------------- Original message ---------------

From:         David Goodman <dgoodman@PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU>

The extent to which a university is being prudent rather than miserly in
not spending all its endowment returns is much-debated. I and almost all
other librarians and faculty obvious think that in general the university
should spend more than 1/3 or 1/2. This is a matter of major concern, but
its effects are not limited to libraries. If my university were to spend
half again as much of its income from the endowment there would be many
useful things to do with the money in addition to library resources.

In fact, if my admittedly extremely wealthy university were to spend twice
as much on the library (which would not be that much of its income), and I
think it certainly can and certainly should, I would suggest that most of
the money be used for increasing the number of professional staff devoted
to direct user services and user outreach, and not primarily to the
acquisitions budget.

I do not think our administrators mistaken when they say that scientific
journals as currently published are in large part not worth the money. I
think they are very much mistaken when they say we can reduce our
expenditures on them when we do not yet have an alternative system
implemented.

I think they are indeed looking at quality and, Al, that you are not.
You have been maintaining on this list and elsewhere that everything
currently published, and more, is worth publishing, even at the current
costs. I know that in my subject this statement shows an ignorance of the
relatively low worth of most of it, and I suspect this is true of many if
not all other fields. (It might help you realize this if -- off the list--
you and I were to examine some of the actual material published in any
field we both understood.)

The provision of the optimal information does not mean provision of the
maximal information. No researchers could do original research if it was
also necessary for them to keep track of literally all conceivably
relevant work. What the librarian's role is, in both reader services and
collections building, is to help them find the information they need, and
avoid the information they do not need. The second part of that is the
harder.

But for all the information they need, they are no longer dependent upon
the scientific journals for distributing it or even for validating it. I
will not recap all the proposals, and I do not claim to be able to predict
what the successful system will prove to be. But I do know that we could
adequately distribute all current research at very much less cost without
loss of essential function, and I think we will.

Libraries do need additional resources. We will not get them if it is not
thought we will use them wisely. Spending yet more over the indefinite
future on the present system of scientific journals is about the most
unproductive use of the money I can imagine. I, like you, want everything
possible to be available for research. But I know that this can only be
done if it is made available at a practical cost. If you insist upon
making it available in a way appropriate only to the most prestigious
material , the result will be that it will not be made available at all.
The more esoteric the material, the smaller the audience, the truer this
is. The more a university library is a research institution, the truer it
is. Even if some research libaries were funded as you hope, most of the
educational world would not be able to afford them. The more important you
general availability is, the more important low cost is. I think it more
important to disseminate the results of research and scholarship than to
price them as luxuries.

Al, a personal plea: if you would direct your efforts to finding out what
researchers and teachers really need now, and helping us get it, you would
do much more good than if you continue to maintain, contrary to all
experience over the last decade at least, that what they need is a bigger
and more expensive version of a cumbersome and outmoded system.

 David Goodman, Princeton University Biology Library
 dgoodman@princeton.edu            609-258-3235

On Mon, 22 May 2000, Albert Henderson wrote:

...........>