Re: Asking for your input re. scholarly publishingdevelopments

[William Loughner <loughner@uga.edu>]

Ann, I'd like to address the collection development angle and mention
something that might get overlooked because it stares us in the face
everyday and we tend to forget what life was like without it.  That's the
PC sitting on our desk!  It dates back a little more than 10 years but
still...

I got into the collection development business about 20 years ago (and
I'll restrict myself here to ordering monographs) and the first thing I
got myself was a shoebox!  How else to keep track of possible items to
order?  I was getting info from all sides, some with nice cards that could
fit in my show box, some not so easy but all had to get into that file.  
And, of course, I had to keep track (or search) for items that I had
already ordered.  I had to order those items (which took a lot of keying).
And there was lots of other time-consuming manual labor I've thankfully
forgotten about.

Anyway it took most of my workweek and part of a clerical staff person's
week too.

Now?  Well..  Most info I get comes over the internet from vendors and LC.  
With not too much work I dump records from WorldCat into an Access file.
And any paper info I get usually matches up with a computer record I
already have.  (Still not hard to search WorldCat for those).  Our catalog
allows me to transfer OCLC records in to initiate orders.  The result: I
never key in (is it still called that?) info into a computer, it's all
cut, paste or dump.  Searching couldn't be easier.

So I spend maybe 12 hours a week doing what took many more hours 20 years
ago.  I would say the most transforming impact of the last 10 years (and
it was only about 10 or 12 years ago that this impact really started to be
felt) has been the tremendous efficiency and increased productivity that
the PC has provided.  Which has allowed the time for all the other neat
things that liblicense people will tell you about!

William Loughner
Physical Sciences Bibliographer (Ret.)
University of Georgia Libraries

bill@loughner.com
706-542-0692