RE: open access to dissertations

["Elizabeth E. Kirk" <elizabeth.e.kirk@dartmouth.edu>]

Kevin is completely on target. Dissertations are by nature highly 
specialized, and in areas of intense study (say, James Joyce) 
where little turf has been left unclaimed, they can be 
downright...odd in their focus. Also, they represent the work of 
scholars who are not yet established in their fields. If you're 
going to pay $130 for a monograph, it is likely that you will 
choose the one written by the star, not the work that not even 
the author hopes is his/her magnum opus. It is the simple but 
cruel reality of many choices and too few dollars.

Elizabeth E. Kirk
Associate Librarian for Information Resources
Dartmouth College Library
Hanover, NH, USA
elizabeth.e.kirk@dartmouth.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Kevin Smith
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 10:15 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: open access to dissertations

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