RE: Interesting item in FirstMonday

["Rickerson, George" <RickersonG@umsystem.edu>]

Very interesting; thanks, Bernie, for the post.  I agree with Cox that
Henderson goes too far, but there is some truth to what Henderson writes.
In my first professional position (in a small college in Washington state,
1973) I encountered a young budget director who asked me one day if the
library's collection wouldn't soon be complete.  He was dismayed to learn
that it would not and that the college would need to plan on budgeting
funds for library acquisitions more or less forever.  I attributed his
unrealistic expectations to youth and naivete.

Now I work for the University of Missouri System.  We are in the final
stages of the implementation of a resource sharing system that covers
nearly all of the academic institutions in Missouri.  In 1998, while
describing the project to a meeting of provosts from across the state, I
was challenged to explain why this project would not make it possible to
drastically cut library acquisitions budgets at member institutions, "and
don't give me that standard response that, for resource sharing to work,
the libraries need resources to share."  These weren't young, naive budget
directors.  They were chief academic officers from baccalaureate and
graduate institutions throughout the state.

I know that academic librarians are not complicit in furthering this
ignorant idea, but I have to say that we have been largely unsuccessful in
educating the academic administrators who oversee our funding about the
role of libraries in the mission of our institutions.  I think it is
unfortunate that a person can earn a Ph.D without at least accidentally
learning what it is that academic libraries do.  What does the phrase
"recorded knowledge of man" mean?  Where do administrators think this
recorded knowledge is?

Sorry for the rant.

George.
************************************************
George Rickerson
Assistant Vice President for Library Systems
UM System
Executive Director
MOBIUS
3215B Lemone Industrial Boulevard
Columbia, MO 65201
573-882-7233	FAX 573-884-3395
Toll-free in Missouri:  1-877-3MOBIUS
rickersong@umsystem.edu
***************************************


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sloan, Bernie [mailto:bernies@uillinois.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 6:45 PM
> To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
> Subject: Interesting item in FirstMonday
> 
> 
> 
> Sort of along the lines of the Pat Schroeder flap last month on
> liblicense-l, here's another item that might provoke some discussion:
> 
> Henderson, Albert. "The 'Big Lie' and The Great Newspaper Caper."
> FirstMonday, 6(3), March 5, 2001:
> 
> http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/current_issue/henderson/index.html
> 
> It begins as a reaction to an earlier Richard Cox article criticizing
> Nicholas Baker's views on newspaper preservation, but quickly 
> turns into
> something different, criticizing the way academic library and higher
> education administrators have handled budgeting for library 
> materials, and
> how this has impacted publishers and the scholarly community.
> 
> This same issue includes a reaction to the article from Richard Cox:
> 
> http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/current_issue/cox/index.html
> 
> Bernie Sloan
> Senior Library Information Systems Consultant
> University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
> 338 Henry Administration Building
> 506 S. Wright Street
> Urbana, IL  61801
> Phone: (217) 333-4895
> Fax:     (217) 265-0454
> E-mail: bernies@uillinois.edu
>