ACQNET v1n008 (January 3, 1991) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acq-v1n008 ACQNET, Vol. 1, No. 8, January 3, 1991 ====================================== (1) FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Networking (39 lines) (2) FROM: Editor SUBJECT: E-mail etiquette (64 lines) (3) FROM: Christian Boissonnas Acquisitions journals (59 lines) (1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: January 3, 1991 From: Editor Re: Where is everyone? I am sitting, at home, looking out of the window toward the south edge of our property where the brook is babbling. It is good to be inside. It looks cold out there, although not cold enough to shut the creek up. In front of me is a big crabapple tree from which hang two bird feeders and a suet holder. I am watching to see if the squirrels are going to win yet another battle in the never ending war for the control of the food. They want it. I want the birds to get it. They remind me of my least favorite people: middle-level universi- crats who are always finding new ways of slowing me down, forcing me to invent yet other ways of beating the system so that I can do the job for which I am paid. I think I have just demonstrated that buying books is not unlike feeding squirrels. That's what's likely to happen if I am too long away from my office. Before I became captivated by the rural drama unfolding outside of my window I was thinking about this network. It started with a bang, one month ago. For a while I feared being inundated, not by my creek, but by a veritable flood of e- mail to sort out, edit, repackage and send to the world through the lines of the Trumansburg Home Telephone Company. Here we are, one month later, almost to the day. Not a whisper, peep, or whimper, from any of you since December 20th. Are you all still on vacation? Have you already run out of things to talk about? Could it be that all messages in the first 7 issues were from fewer than 10 people and that these are "networked out" for the time being? Who are you, all the others who asked to be part of this? Where are you? Why are you not writing anything? You can't just read; we can't really discuss things if you don't write. And, when you write, you can't only ask questions either. You have to reply to the questions of others. That's basic manners: when someone asks you a question you answer. For more on this, see the next item. Or is this medium so new still that you feel ambivalent about using it? I have trouble conceiving that a network in which 10 people write and 20 others read is viable. What do you say? (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [The following two items came from the HUMANIST LISTSERV which is among those that I read regularly. It has nothing to do with acquisitions, but everything to do with how people relate through e-mail. Hence I thought it was pertinent here. Editor] Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear Subject: 4.0854 Humanist: E-mail Etiquette (2/42) Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0854. Wednesday, 26 Dec 1990. (a) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 12:12:05 EST (23 lines) From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM> Subject: E-mail etiquette (b) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 10:06:40 EST (19 lines) From: Willard McCarty Subject: on repetition (a) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 12:12:05 EST From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM> Subject: E-mail etiquette On 14 Dec., Dana Paramskas asked a couple of questions about etiquette. I think a short reply to the sender of a file or answer to a question is simple courtesy. You say thank you when someone has helped you out face-to-face. Why not now--especially since it has taken a bit of effort to rummage around the computer or files and send what they want. If you ask for info and say you will post a summary back to the list, do it. Not to is simply selfish. Even if no one answered, tell us. As we stumble around in this new virtual community, we will all be asking for help sometime. Courtesy extends even further electronically. ----------------------------------------------- Elliott Parker BITNET: 3ZLUFUR@CMUVM Journalism Dept. Internet: eparker@well.sf.ca.us Central Michigan University Compuserve: 70701,520 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 USA UUCP: {psuvax1}!cmuvm.bitnet!3zlufur (b) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 10:06:40 EST From: Willard McCarty Subject: on repetition Yes, it is annoying when queries, answers, and topics are repeated in a way that seems to add nothing to what has already been said. It is a good idea to keep, say, the last year's worth of Humanist on some local hard disk so as to avoid needless queries to the group as a whole. I think we need to consider the nature of this medium, however, before we vent spleen on the repeaters or spend significant effort on devising means of avoiding repetition. Walter Ong points out that in cultures whose primary means of communication is oral, repetition has a vital function: one repeats in order that something be preserved. The electronic seminar uses a medium that in several ways manifests what Ong calls "orality". Perhaps, then, repetition is not so much a bug as a feature. Willard McCarty (3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: January 3, 1991 From: Christian Boissonnas Re: Acquisitions journals [I've got something to say, so I'm relinquishing my editorial hat. Editorial board, please get ready to jump in if this gets hot.] There are too many acquisitions journals. In this category I also include journals whose primary focus is collection development or serials librarian- ship. I can think of six of them without having to get up from my chair to dial up some network to query its database. This includes AGAINST THE GRAIN which, with its frequent full-length articles, is looking suspiciously like a journal. It does not include electronic newsletters. I am not sure that this is totally logical, but I'm talking print here. How can we legitimately go and crab at serials publishers for coming out with more and more titles with very narrow focuses when we feed this trend? How is that different from Pergamon splitting a title into a bunch of parts, each dealing with a sub-specialty? In general I feel that library publishing is totally out of control, with well over 90% of it pure tripe. But let's stay with acquisitions/serials/collection development titles of which over 90% also is pure tripe. There's plenty there for me to stew over. I have three complaints: First, we write insufferably boringly and badly. As authors we've got to lighten up and stop taking ourselves so seriously. I mean, what we have to say hardly has the same value to the universe as, say, the Bible, Hemingway's works, or the latest medical magic report from the New England Journal of Medicine. So why are we acting as if it does? Read some of our acquisitions "scholars" again and tell me honestly how often you were uplifted, entertained, or even, educated. Even if we have something worth saying, we say it so badly that the message gets lost. For that matter, tell me how often your profes- sional reading has had any impact on the way you do things or think of things? How often do you go back to check on something you remember reading? Second, we write, not because we have something to say, but because it's the thing to do. We're just as bad as the scholars who publish so as not to perish. Why do we insist on dragging ourselves down to their level? We are so much better than they are! Third, we either do lousy research, lousy because it is methodologically deficient, or because it is not replicable. By this I mean that the data we present and analyze are institution-specific and not generalizable, hence worthless toward the creation of a theory of acquisitions and the advancement of library science. So, there are too many acquisitions journals. What can we do about it? How about someone taking on this project: Compile a list of all acquisi- tions/serials/collection development journals. Then, poll a sample in the universe of monographs and serials acquisitions and collection development librarians and ask them two things: First, rank the journals with the most useful at the top. Second, if they could have only one or two, which would these be? If nothing else, it might help me figure out what titles I can safely continue to ignore. Then again, it might not, if it turns out that most librarians in each sub-specialty read only the journals in that sub-specialty. OK. Start shooting.