Re: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank

["FrederickFriend" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

I have always held Derk Haank in great respect but I rank his 
words to Richard Poynder in the same category as a presentation 
he gave some years ago - when he worked for Elsevier - stating 
that Elsevier should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Science! 
There are thousands of libraries across the world unable to get 
access to journals their users need, and thousands of libraries 
unable to purchase the books their users need because 
book-purchasing money has been sucked into supporting "big 
deals". Fifteen years ago I was as mesmerized by the siren call 
of the "big deal" as any librarian, but it soon became clear that 
the sirens were leading libraries onto the rocks of distorted 
collection policies.

Fred Friend

-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Thatcher
Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 11:16 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank

I find this comment rather astonishing:

>On whether there is a structural problem in the scholarly 
>publishing market, and the likelihood that the research 
>community might at some point no longer be able to afford to 
>keep paying publishers' prices:
>
>"I don't believe there is a structural problem, and things will 
>not fall apart. There are always countervailing forces. I don't 
>believe that our pricing is a big problem, and I am sure that 
>this market can carry on indefinitely. As I say, I accept that 
>there was once a problem. But today, we can't give libraries 
>access to any more journals because they already have access to 
>all they could ever want."

I would be interesting in knowing whether there are ANY 
librarians who would agree with this statement, and the one 
earlier in the interview where Haank says: "The Big Deal is the 
best invention since sliced bread."

I suppose a CEO is paid to be optimistic, though...

Sandy Thatcher


>An interview with Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science+Business
>Media has been published in the January issue of Information
>Today.
>
>More here:
>http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/01/interview-with-springers-derk-haank.html