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Re: Yes, it's time (RE: Is it time to stop printing journals?)

A rather delayed response to this thread, which I found very interesting. It has been leading me to puzzle out why the consumer magazine market has not gone in the same direction (at least it has not gone there yet)

http://exacteditions.blogspot.com/2007/04/journals-and-consumer-magazines.html

I have also been wondering why a similar aggregation solution for consumer magazines, seems so unattractive. Can one imagine a Science Direct for all the major consumer magazines? It would be a rather monstrous compilation, but does that not tell us something about how much the big research libraries really wanted/needed solutions like Science Direct? Only with big and efficient aggregators such as Elsevier could the STM library world have moved so quickly towards an electronic solution for their patrons. Libraries are of course vastly more important to the STM market than they are to the consumer magazine publishers.

However, it seems likely that there is some role for comprehensive aggregation services for digital books and digital magazines. Adam



On 3/31/07, Rick Anderson <rickand@unr.edu> wrote:
I am curious to hear whether this is a commonly held sentiment.

I wouldn't call Scott's statement an expression of sentiment; it
was an observation of what's happening among his patrons.  And I
would largely second it from the perspective of my institution.
A few years ago we instituted a strict and explicit program of
online preference for our journals -- if a journal is available
online and someone wants us to acquire it in print, that person
must submit a written justification to the Dean of Libraries.  I
think I can count on one hand the number of requests that we've
received.  The fact is that printed paper is a lousy format for
distributing journal content.  It's a great format for extended
reading, but a terrible one for any other kind of
information-seeking.


If this equation has indeed flipped in a matter of a half-dozen
or so years, this ranks as one of the most important periods in
scholarly communication history.

I don't think there's any question that this is exactly the case.
What's been remarkable to me is the range of responses to these
dramatic changes -- library patrons have largely taken them in
stride, few of them seemingly aware of the fundamental and
radical nature of the changes that have taken place in the
marketplace that serves them.  Many of us in the library
profession, meanwhile (though by no means all of us), are in
denial, defending our traditional territory and furiously
continuing to focus on the materials that our patrons are least
interested in.

Is it time to stop printing journals?  Yes, and past time -- even
in the humanities, where affection for print has tended to
linger.  Regardless of content, ink-on-paper is a highly wasteful
and ineffective way to distribute discrete, article-sized chunks
of information.

It's also, by the way, time to stop thinking in terms of journal
"issues" -- the issue is a meaningless construct that made sense
only in the print realm.

Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu