Re: Funding OA (Long-Term)& Library Mission

[mrleach@fas.harvard.edu]

    Jan mentions the pressure libraries have had in subscribing to 
certain serial titles over the decades.  Certainly, this pressure 
has had an impact on which titles were purchased.

    However, for many academic libraries, as well as some public 
libraries, the issue of which serial title to purchase, or 
continue, is more complex, especially when the mission of a given 
library is to "preserve" such material for possible, future use.

    For instance, in my own 20 plus years of collection experience 
at Harvard, there is always the question, "Who might use this 
title in 50 years? In 100 years? In 300 years?"  I and many 
colleagues look at developing bodies of collections, building 
complex and complete domains of knowledge.

    If many libraries had not developed such a mission, the 
current electronic landscape would be much different.  When it 
came time for scanning old collections, whether monographic or 
serial, were publishers (either commerical or society) the ones 
with the complete printed sets?  Where would Google Book be 
without their participating libraries?

    Now, with the digital revolution, there are newer 
organizations being developed with preservation as one mission. 
However, there are still no major cultural institutions other 
than libraries/archives/museums with a specified mission to 
preserve for future generations.  I'm happy to take bets on which 
institute will be more likely to be here in 100 years--Harvard or 
Google.

    So, any Open Access model (or likely several concurrent 
models) will need to include components for preservation akin to 
what libraries have done for their societies/cultures these past 
centuries.  And there are folks looking at this complexity.  Of 
course, we could use more voices and support in this endeavor! To 
help all of us "to get there from where we are now."

Michael Leach
Head of Collection Development, Cabot Science Library, Harvard
Past President, American Society for Information Science & Technology
Adjunct Professor, Simmons GSLIS


Quoting JOHANNES VELTEROP <velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>:

> Adam Hodgkin says (with the caveat that it is an
> over-simplification) that "the scientific and scholarly research
> market is by and large driven by Producers." He is completely
> right, of course, and it always was thus. "Publish or Perish"
> rather than "Read or Rot". The absurdity in the system was the
> fact that subscriptions were seen to be reader-paid (though not
> really, since the intermediary, the librarian, paid). A perhaps
> necessary absurdity when there was only print. But an unnecessary
> one now.
>
> And subscriptions were always 'just-in-case' when it comes to
> readership. Tales abound of new journal issues not even being
> opened for months. And pressure on librarians to take
> subscriptions to journals was often exerted chiefly by faculty
> who published in them, or felt that they might at one point.
> Usage-based perceptions of a journal's value may just be
> substituting one absurdity for the next.
>
> Also, journal articles have characteristics that are not diss=
> imilar to advertisements. Authors trying to 'sell' their ideas in
> exchange for recognition and citations (which are, after all, the
> currency authors need for their careers and for future funding).
> Of course, articles also contain information for the reader. So
> do advertisements, which are nonetheless typically paid for by
> the advertiser (though one wonders in the case of some glossy
> magazines).
>
> All this points in the direction of a user-paid (user-side paid)
> open access publishing model making the most sense. Providing a
> natural brake on over-production and a natural opening up of
> readership. The question should not be open access yea or nea,
> but how to get there from where we are now.
>
> Jan Velterop