RE: OUP Project TORCH - Thanks; Oct 1 deadline reminder

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

To avoid possibly biasing the survey, I have delayed posting until after
the survey closed. OUP is proposing to reprint electronically numerous
important scholarly books, mainly from its humanities and social sciences
list, and sell them in packages--the main purpose of the survey seems to
have been an attempt to determine a market price--and presumably to get
some publicity for the project.

Unfortunately OUP does not own the rights to many of the illustrations. It
thus proposes to provide these books, in fields such as art, literature,
and history, without some of the illustrations, rather than pay the
necessary fees to the rightsholders, which might price the books beyond
what libraries would pay.

I have never known a library deliberately purchase books with some of the
illustrations removed (except sometimes in the case of great rarities
where complete copies cannot be obtained). I have never known a library
even accept such books as donations. I refer here not just to academic
research libraries, but to all libraries, however modest.

I recognize the dilemma, but OUP may soon be able to advertise itself as:
OUP, the Publisher of Mutilated Books. Perhaps Torch was the right name
for this project.

Assoc. Prof. David Goodman
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Liblicense-L Listowner
Sent: Wed 9/29/2004 8:15 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: OUP Project TORCH - Thanks; Oct 1 deadline reminder 
 
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 11:32:37 -0400
From: October Ivins <october.ivins@mindspring.com>

Dear Ann:  Thank you again for posting our original invitation.  Would you
please post this reminder as well?

Best,  October
________________

Dear Librarian,

Many thanks to the 180 of you who have taken time to respond to our survey
about planned subject areas, features and pricing of these new subject
collections of online monographs. Your ratings and suggestions are
invaluable.

If any of you have not yet responded but plan to do so, please note that
Friday, Oct. 1st is the deadline.  If a little more time would help, we
will not close the survey until late Saturday, Oct. 2nd.

The original invitation follows:

Project TORCH (The Online Resource Collection in the Humanities) is a new
endeavor, a collaboration among university presses. TORCH will offer
discipline based collections comprised of 1,000 titles each of backfile
monographs from the last 20 years. Initial planning is funded by the
Mellon Foundation with Oxford University Press leading the initiative.  
OUP has hired an executive director, established an advisory board and is
negotiating with other university presses to include their titles.  As
consultants who are also librarians, we are helping TORCH assess market
interest in planned subject areas, features and pricing.  Your preferences
in these areas will help shape the product.

We understand that this is an especially busy time of the academic year,
but OUP needs to collect this information now to meet grant reporting
deadlines. We invite you to share this invitation with colleagues, since
one individual may not be the best person to respond to every question.

The survey will take 15 to 25 minutes, depending on how many comments you
choose to make.  You may work on the survey in several sessions as it will
save your place if you are using the same machine.

Please enter the survey here:  
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=19262630894

Please respond by Friday, October 1, 2004.

The survey will ask for your institution's Carnegie Classification.  If
you would like to look it up before beginning, please follow this link:
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/Classification/CIHE2000/PartIIfiles/partII
.htm

Thank you,

October Ivins, MLS
Digital Content & Access Solutions
october.ivins@mindspring.com

Judy Luther, MLS, MBA
Informed Strategies
judy.luther@informedstrategies.com