Re: ALPSP statement on e-publishing.

[David Goodman <dgoodman@princeton.edu>]

Yes, it does increase the need for senior as compared to jr staff--but not
at a 1:1 ratio.

Consider library automation--we have maybe half the people in tech
services that we did when I came here 20 yrs ago. We have about as many
professionals, the decline being support staff, such as an entire group of
workers who typed headings on catalog cards. Of course, we now have a
substantial systems staff. When you count in the money to buy computers
and so on, I suspect that it comes out about even in terms of dollars.
When (almost) all of our paper journals have been replaced by electronic,
we'll not need another two groups of routine workers--though we will
certainly need some additional high level specialists.  (I am not being
totally heartless--at least here, several of the current processing people
in this area are well qualified to move up, and undoubtedly will.) But
this is a individual-item processing operation, each item being unique,
operations inherently physically dispersed, and (so far) the continuing
need for manual handling of the items. That's the most difficult possible
situation.

Publishing is of course different. It is not an individual unique item
operation, it is much more centralized, and with ejournals involves no
physical handling at all. That should be much more favorable.

J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk wrote:
>
> Do you have data showing that top notch kick ass (etc.etc.)IT professional
> has got cheaper?  A survey done a couple of years ago by Claire Greenhalgh
> in this dept at Loughborough University, for the UK government's
> Department of Trade and Industry, showed that supply of appropriately
> multiskilled staff at reasonable wages was one of the most important
> constraints on growth of the electronic publishing industry.
>
> While the collapse of dot.coms and the economic aftermath of 11 September
> may have put a few of these paragons back on to the labour market, they
> can still command salaries well in excess of those paid by publishers in
> pre-electronic days (it's not a high-wage sector of the economy
> traditionally).  Recent surveys of the impact of electronic publishing on
> both publishers and librariues show that it increases the need for senior,
> high-skill professionals and replaces lower-skill, lower wage clerical
> labour used in the days of print (a survey that I did for the Association
> of Subscription Agents in Nov-Dec 2001 showed this).
>
> So I am inclined to agree with Bob.
>
> Fytton Rowland.