You can certainly add my "you got it" to the messages below. As
information professionals, none of us _wants_ to deny information access
to anyone: however, for those of us who do not work at research libraries
with unlimited funds, we have the obligation to serve each of our patrons
to the best of our financial (and other!) abilities. This means, very
simply, that continually dumping money into the black hole of journal
publishers -- whether they be corporate or society -- coffers, and when
the demands of the publishers yearly exceeds the annual inflation and cost
of living rate by 100% or more, and when our budgets do not increase (as
mine certainly hasn't!!) in step with publisher demands, there comes a
point when fiscal responsibility has to weigh in with the benefits of
"owning" scholarly information.
What bemuses me is that publishers cannot see, or refuse to believe, that
small and medium academic libraries WILL reach a point where they have to
say "too bad, so sad" to many subscriptions. This IS the reality of the
publishing world -- and if publishers want to price themselves out of
business because they want to live in a fantasy world made up of surviving
by the academic welfare system, they may eventually find themselves the
bibliographic equivalents of street people.
None of us is so idealistic to believe that information has no price. Yet
none of us is so stupid to believe that one journal or monograph is the
"pearl of great price" for which we will sacrifice all of the rest of our
bibliographic resources.
P V Picerno
Peter Picerno <ppicerno@choctaw.astate.edu>
2 messages, 103 lines:
(1)------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 14:55:45 -0700
From: Carol Morse <MorsCa@WWC.EDU>
Subject: Re: Harnad vs. Henderson: A view from the bleachers
Thank you, Steve. I believe you have spoken for a lot of us smaller
colleges. Carol
***********************************************************************
Carol Morse Tel. 509) 527-2684
Serials Librarian Fax 509) 527-2001
Walla Walla College Library Email morsca@wwc.edu
105 S.W. Adams St.
College Place, WA 99324-1195
Give us strength for the journey and wisdom to know the way.
***********************************************************************
(2)------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 15:47:10 -0500
From: Kathleen Thorne <kathleen@sjsu.edu>
Organization: San Jose State University
Subject: Re: Harnad vs. Henderson: A view from the bleachers
AMEN!!!
Steve, you've said the things I've been thinking as I read the dialogue --
our students can't always cope with reliably published articles
("scholarly journal? what's that? I read it in Newsweek, isn't that
scholarly enough?" "I found it somewhere while I was surfing the Web, so
it must be true....") without assistance, and even some of the faculty
have problems with electronically published materials in journals. As for
profits, well, maybe the Chancellor's Office creams off some, I don't
know, but at the campus level we certainly don't have any extra funds.
Mr. Henderson, you need to learn the realities of what the average
university library faces.
Kathleen Thorne
Serials/Collections Development
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kathleen Thorne, Serials Cataloger
San Jose State University, San Jose CA 95192-0028
ph: (408) 924-2826 fax: (408) 924-2701
email: kathleen@email.sjsu.edu
---Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines---
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve Black wrote:
>
> I'm a librarian at a private, independent liberal arts college with
> roughly 4000 FTE. Our patrons are primarily students, not research
> scientists. We are price and product takers. That means we have to live
> with what is available, and we have very, very little voice in pricing
> decisions or which serials are available to us in what format.
>
> >From my perspective on the periphery, Mr. Harnad and Mr. Henderson each
> miss or choose to gloss over key points.
>
> Mr. Harnad, IMHO, does not give enough credit to the editorial process.
It
> is extremely important for our library to have journals we can trust to
have
> good content. Maybe some day it will work to turn students loose into a
> vast pool of indexed and even annotated self-published articles, but we
sure
> ain't there now.
>
> Mr. Henderson consistently lays the blame for the serials crisis at the
> feet of university administrators, but I think this misses most of the
> true problem, for two reasons.
>
> First, even assuming that everything Mr. Henderson says about research
> university spending is true, that says nothing about the spending at the
> College of Saint Rose and the thousands of institutions like us. The 120
> or so ARL libraries could buy every single journal published, but that
> wouldn't sell enough subscriptions to keep many publishers alive. I would
> think that publishers have to sell many subscriptions to smaller
> institutions to make ends meet. Our college gets by, but we aren't
> salting away profits by starving the library (or by any other means).
>
> Second, there are too many instances of sharp price increases by
> commercial publishers to blame it on ARL library non-spending. Any one of
> us could point to a journal that doubled, tripled, or quadrupled in price
> when it went from a society or small independent publisher to a commercial
> publisher. For instance, the BI journal Research Strategies was published
> regularly by Mountainside Publishing for $34 in 1997. It is now in the
> hands of JAI/Elsevier, and for 2000 it costs $125 for a journal with no
> more articles and irregular publication. And I would be curious to see
> any reasoned argument that the current Research Strategies has
> higher-quality content than it had in the past.
>
> Steve Black
> Reference,Instruction, and Serials Librarian
> Neil Hellman Library
> The College of Saint Rose
> 392 Western Avenue
> Albany, NY 12203
>
> blacks@mail.strose.edu
> (518) 458-5494
