Will open access spell the end of medical libraries?

["D Anderson" <dh-anderson@corhealth.com>]

The cover story in the November 2003 issue of Medicine on the Net is "Open
access: Will it spell the end of the medical library?" Science writer
Catherine Zandonella explores the possibility that the move to "free"
online collections may eliminate the need for a physical library and
library staff. Some excerpts, with permission from the publisher:

Predictions that technology will do away with the librarian have been
around for decades. In the 1957 movie Desk Set, Spencer Tracy plans to
replace Katharine Hepburn and her staff of research librarians with a
computer. Hepburn, with usual aplomb, shows him the error of his ways.

But Hepburn didn't face today's challenging mix of economic factors and a
scientific publishing industry that has been described as dysfunctional.
The pressures on hospital and medical center library budgets are greater
than ever. More than 40 states are reporting budget deficits, which
translate to cutbacks at state universities and their medical schools.
Endowments for private universities are suffering as the U.S. economy
staggers its way out of recession. As if budget cuts weren't enough,
librarians are buffeted by yearly price hikes for subscriptions to the
scientific journals and information services that their physicians and
researchers rely on most.

Enter a possible savior: open access publishing. Instead of locking up
scientific research in subscription-based journals, open access publishers
make the articles freely available on the Internet. Anyone with a computer
terminal and a phone line is free to print, copy, distribute, and reuse
the article as long as they give proper attribution to the work's authors
and publisher.

But freedom has its price, and medical librarians could end up being the
ones who pay it. With the onset of free access to medical literature,
accessible from the physician's office desktop or hospital workstation,
cost-conscious hospital managers may be wondering why they should maintain
a physical library when a virtual one will do just as well. "Senior
executives are looking to cut costs, so open access is attractive," says
Logan Ludwig, associate dean of library and telehealth services at Loyola
University of Chicago's Strich School of Medicine in Maywood, IL.

>From Medicine on the Net http://www.corhealth.com/MOTN/Default.asp

Dean H. Anderson

COR Health
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