ACQNET v1n011 (January 9, 1991) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acq-v1n011 ACQNET, Vol 1, No. 11, January 9, 1991 ====================================== (1) FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Suspension of ACQNET (12 lines) (2) FROM: Barbara Winters SUBJECT: Acquisitions journals (35 lines) (3) FROM: Caleb Hanson SUBJECT: Acquisitions journals (28 lines) (1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DATE: January 9, 1991 FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Suspension of ACQNET Some, if not all of us, will migrate to Chicago over the next few days. Will we still be able to communicate face-to-face? Can I stand to be away from this machine for five days? Maybe the forced weaning away from it will do me good. Seeing many of you, I know, will. In any case, I consider going to ALA a vacation so, by the terms to which you all agreed, we will suspend operations until Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. Feel free to send stuff, but it won't get dealt with until I come back. (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Jan 91 05:32 EDT From: Barbara Winters Subject: Acquisitions journals Suzanne Freeman and I recently wrote an article for ACQUISITIONS LIBRARIAN about the ethical and practical implications of LIBRARIANS' feeding the publishing machine. (I'd furnish a citation if I were in my office and if it weren't 5:00 a.m. EST.) While I recognize that the situation does occur in this profession as in others (probably to a lesser extent, however), since writing the article I have become more closely associated with two library journals and I am at least satisfied that these two (and no doubt the other major journals) have efficient peer review policies and procedures. We do ourselves a disservice if we think we're not weeding out really poor research, and so forth. I use the literature in two very utilitarian ways -- I simply can't seem to browse issues the way I once could because of the tyranny of the urgent with my job: I review CURRENT CONTENTS: SOCIAL & BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES and highlight the articles I want to read (spending almost no time on the articles that I want to bypass). Second, I do literature searches for my own use as part of my work (not doing anything new till I see what the literature has to say) -- probably rivaling the number of searches of many reference librarians. I also am printing off ACQNET. What a fertile resource for ideas for discussion groups, personal research, and so forth. And it certainly lends itself to serendipity more than my utilitarian uses of the literature! PS Be prepared for me to talk with a lot of you at Midwinter about how you're positioning yourselves for the changes that electronic publishing will make in your jobs. I've been asked to prepare a lecture on this for our faculty organization's Professional Development Committee. (3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Jan 91 11:29:39 est From: "Caleb C. Hanson" Subject: Acquisitions journals You begin (vol. 1, no. 8) opining that we're not writing enough to this newsletter; it almost sounds like you would rather hear *any- thing* from more people, even if it's not especially good. Then you begin your article opining that we're writing too much and too poorly in too many places (print sources, explicitly leaving out electronic newsletters). I find this ironic, or something. Or maybe appropriate. I agree there are an awful lot of acquisitions- serials-collection development journals. We should stop sending the bad, or boring, or unscholarly stuff to the printed journals, and put it into electronic forums. Sure, 90% of the traffic will still be tripe (Sturgeon's Law holds), but isn't this a better medium for it? A couple of keystrokes and it's gone, instead of taking up shelf space. To address your questions more specifically, this newsletter started at almost the same time as I saw the announcement for Bill Katz's new acquisitions journal. I definitely want to keep on ACQNET (as long as it lasts), but I can't believe I need *both* The Acquisitions Librarian and LAPT. A lot of the stuff in Against The Grain might be more appropriate for either e-mail (the quick & timely notes) or a journal (the longer articles you remarked on), but for now I'm happy to read it as is. I'll stop here so that Karen Muller can still read most of this issue.