---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 09:58:45 -0600 From: Dan Lester <DLESTER@BSU.IDBSU.EDU> Subject: -Guidelines for Journal Usage (Albert Henderson) -Reply Well, I think I may have figured it out. I'd thought there were some contradictory things in Albert's comments, but hadn't correlated them all. Now he appears to have done it for me himself. ======================= Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 23:32:12 EDT From: Albert Henderson <70244.1532@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: -Guidelines for Journal Usage The summary figures published by the U.S. Dept. of Education show administrative costs rose faster and higher than any other catagory during the 1980s while libraries and instruction took a real beating. Library expenditure growth fell far behind research expenditures. I will mail you my analysis. -------------------------- I don't disagree with that. But, as previously pointed out, thanks to the vagaries of laws and regulations in most states, the ONLY areas that can be legally cut is frequently "capital expenditures", which means two things: library materials and equipment. ======================= > Perhaps publishers need to be more selective in what they choose to > publish. Publishers exercise considerable review boards for quality control. ............cutting more out here............... This may be the reason that Henry Kissinger said that there is no politics more petty than academic politics. How many of your sources claimed their own publications are drivel? .........more cuts............... You are right but you ignore the solution. Expert analyses of samples of the primary literature have rejected 30 to 80 percent of it as being poorly prepared. Preparation takes substantial library research. ----------------------- Bingo! Albert has gone on about how much research is poorly prepared......right after he has told us about the wonderful "review boards for quality control", the growing research dollars, and so forth. Well, if most of the research is poorly prepared, if there are no library dollars to facilitate the research, if the publishers' reviewers and boards don't know well done research from bad, then maybe the solution is to cut research funding. Heresy? Of course. Said tongue in cheek? Not really. Sometimes heresy is the right answer. =============================== Researchers have been asking for review articles, monographs, bibliographies, and other "secondary" publications that evaluate and summarize primary research. --------------------------------- True enough, but much of that is driven by those who are into the current trendy field of meta-analysis, with which I'm pretty familiar. I'm not knocking meta-analysis, Gene Glass, or anyone else....but like other trendy things, it isn't the final answer to the world's problems either. ===================== As a result of the impoverished library market and demands for electronic products, publishers have cut their coverage rather than expanding it. Total numbers of monographs in some fields has actually been falling, while numbers of researchers and research expenditures climb, because of the weak library market. ---------------------------- Well, since we've been told that 30-80 percent of it is crap, and we apparently can't trust either the academicicans (many of whom have told me that their is plenty of mutual back scratching going on, big surprise....and I can confirm this by personal experience) or the publishers (who are after money, just in a different way than gaining tenure), maybe this cutting back is good. If we indeed trim the fat and not the meat (though that is questionable considering what Albert has told us), then that sounds good to me. =================== The GAO audit turned up a lot of real abuses of "indirect" cost claims at some major universities. These administrative peccadillos are quite real and expensive, in my opinion. They certainly cost the research community plenty of money that was refunded to the Treasury when it could have been used for collection development. ---------- Once again, big deal. I'm not supporting such nonsense, but percentage-wise it is small. And, is it really any worse than the fifty dollar dinner a sales rep for XYZ press buys for me at ALA or the 900 a nite suite they throw their party in or the thousands of dollars of free booze and munchies given away at their party? If the latter is part of the "cost of doing business", then maybe the former is too. Yeah, more heresy, but think about it. o-) ======================= You need more money. Researchers deserve the best possible information resources. The people who underwrite university expenditures deserve the most cost-effective research and education. They cannot get it by sucking resources out of their libraries. --------------------- No argument. But I've yet to hear an answer as to HOW this happens. Talking to faculty is NOT the answer, as has been told by many on this list. Faculty are only slightly less powerless than librarians. Should we all quit in protest? Should we have a good old sit-in in the President's Office? (sorry, been there, done that, don't do it no more) Should we start spreading nasty rumors about the Financial VP that I mentioned the other day (NOTE: NOT at this university!) just because he's been there thirty years, won't give the library research money, and has the President and the Board in his pocket? No, he never did anything illegal, I'm quite sure. He just ran the institution by controlling the pursestrings. The Board loved it, as he was NEVER over budget, and always returned a little. o-( So, I think we agree on the majority of the motherhood and applepie and flagwaving stuff. We don't agree on where the problem is or how to solve it. I'm in complete agreement that half of the stuff published is purest crap. That includes half the literature in library and information science. That includes some stuff I've published over the years. That even includes half the stuff on any LISTSERV on the nets, even the moderated ones. Maybe we either agree to accept that as a fact of life, and then get on with doing what librarians do...trying to pick the best stuff, make it available to their users, and reject the rest....and to forget about the whining of publishers and others. If half the publishers in the world, including half the university presses, go out of business, who cares? Not me. It would probably be an improvement. It is the way things are in the business world. Many of the once great have fallen on hard times (Chrysler, Apple, IBM, etc, etc) and none of them are guaranteed greatness forever, just like is the case with mere mortals. Even my "greenest" friends aren't arguing against letting some species die out....such as a bushel of useless businesses. dan Dan Lester, Network Information Coordinator Boise State University Library, Boise, Idaho, 83725 USA voice: 208-385-1235 fax: 208-385-1394 dlester@bsu.idbsu.edu OR alileste@idbsu.idbsu.edu Cyclops' Internet Toolbox: http://cyclops.idbsu.edu "How can one fool make another wise?" Kansas, 1979.
