Re: open access to dissertations

[Kevin Smith <kevin.l.smith@duke.edu>]

Sandy's research confirms what librarians are usually perfectly 
ready to admit, that they often must exclude revised 
dissertations from approval plans.  The problem with the 
Chronicle article, however, is that it correctly notes the effect 
but selects the wrong cause.  I doubt any librarian excludes 
dissertations because of open access ETD repositories or even 
because of ProQuest availability.  Being based on a dissertation 
is simply a surrogate, in approval plan profiles, for weeding out 
books likely to have a very high cost and a limited audience.  As 
monograph budgets shrink, libraries simply cannot afford to buy 
books that will have only very specialized readerships and will 
sometimes cost over $100 per title.  If such purchases are to be 
made at all, they have to be made in response to an expressed 
need, not included in a blanket approval plan where very limited 
returns are permitted.  And from this perspective, information 
about the scope of revisions, will it would be helpful, is 
probably not determinative.

Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Director of Scholarly Communications
Duke University, Perkins Library
P.O. Box 90193
919-668-4451
kevin.l.smith@duke.edu


On Apr 11, 2011, at 8:28 PM, "Sandy Thatcher" 
<sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
> For those of you who cannot access the full article, I'll reprint
> my comment on it here:
>
> I addressed this question in "Dissertations into Books? The Lack of
> Logic in the System" (Against the Grain, April 2007), which can be
> found at Penn State Press's web site here:
>
> http://www.psupress.org/news/S