Re: Message from Pat Schroeder re: Librarians

[Adrian Alexander <alexandera@lindahall.org>]

Anthony,

With respect to academic library issues, I would caution against regarding
what is or is not reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education as much of
an indicator. My experience has been that, if it doesn't relate directly
to some sort of information technology issue, they aren't much interested.

As far as ARL is concerned, my personal observation is that this important
organization does a great deal for its members in terms of compiling and
presenting data on scholarly publishing costs, library expenditures, etc.
that is of great use to those libraries in making their respective cases
locally for adequate library funding.  The direct effort of making the
library's case to university administration, state funding authorities,
etc, has to come at the local level, however, and that work gets done
"under the radar," so to speak, so it isn't publicized, but it does get
done. The problem is that there is a lot more to this issue than a
strategy that depends primarily on "senior library figures" applying
"pressure" to university administrators can solve.

Adrian Alexander
Big 12 Plus Libraries Consortium
www.big12plus.org
____


At 10:25 PM 2/24/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Adrian
>
>In the UK at any rate a major part of expenditure on lobbying by the
>Publishers Association is to press government for more funding for
>libraries, both public libraries and libraries at all educational levels.
>The PA also pay for statistical research in this area. I cannot speak for
>the AAP but if you look at their site it does look as if they are active
>in areas such as literacy.
>
>It seems to me that spending on libraries and particularly spending on
>buying books and journals and electronic products as a percentage of
>overall university spend in both the US and the UK is a disgrace and I
>cannot understand why we do not see more signs of pressures on
>administration from senior library figures. You may well be aware of
>campaigns for more money being conducted by the ARL (for example) but they
>are well hidden. I cannot find them on the ARL site and I have also done a
>search on the Chronicle of Higher Education and I cannot find such
>initiatives there. Why not?
>
>Anthony Watkinson
>14, Park Street, Bladon, Woodstock,
>Oxon, England OX20 1RW
>phone +44 1993 811561 and fax 1993  810067