ACQNET v4n001 (January 5, 1994) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acqnet-v4n001 ISSN: 1057-5308 *************** ACQNET, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 5, 1994 ====================================== (1) FROM: Christian SUBJECT: ACQNET starts its fourth volume(46 lines) (2) FROM: Peter Stevens SUBJECT: Mellen Press, vanity presses (56 lines) (3) FROM: Peter Stevens SUBJECT: New OCLC services (20 lines) (1)------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Christian Subject: ACQNET starts its fourth volume Date: January 5, 1994 It is hard to believe, but with this issue we start volume 4 of ACQNET. That Charleston Conference, when I recklessly agreed to start this, seems so recent to me that it cannot possibly have happened as far back as November 1990. But it did. That was when 25 of you decided that it absolutely had to get done and that it absolutely had to get done by me. Volume 1 covered the end of 1990, from December 10 on, and all of 1991. It had 140 issues. Volume 2, for 1991, had 112. Volume 3, which we just completed had 93. I don't know exactly what this tells us. It could be that the medium is maturing and people are more discriminating in what they contribute for publication. It could also be that people are so saturated with e-mail, listservs, gophers, etc. that their tolerance for it is decreasing. Or it could be that everyone feels so overburdened that contributing to ACQNET is just one more chore. Or it could be that what people contribute now is no longer as interesting and worthy of discussion as what they contributed two years ago, or that I am no longer what you want me to do. Counter to this, the list of subscribers keeps increasing. There are now over 850 addresses in the list of subscribers and more are added every week, many more than are un-subscribing. In many cases one address is just a re-distribution point for a whole lot of individuals at a specific site. So we really don't know how many people read ACQNET and we have no way of knowing. We do know this, however. ACQNET, as originally envisioned by the 25 people who thought it should be created, was meant as a forum for discussion, not just as a medium for subscribers to ask for information about acquisitions matters. It seems to me that, in the past year, we have had a lot more questions asked and a lot less discussion. Does this make ACQNET less valuable than it used to be? Not necessarily. It is as useful and active as subscribers want it to be, no more, no less. My job as editor is not to make it this or that, or generate news items of interest to you, but to control the traffic and apply some standards to what you, the subscribers, send. It is perhaps an appropriate time for you to think about what ACQNET is for you, how it helps you, how it has evolved, what it should be, and let the rest of us know. That is the only way I know to keep it relevant and useful. (2)------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Peter Stevens (Univ. of Washington) Subject: Edward Mellen Press Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1993 12:38:46 -0500 My thanks to Christian for reprinting the interesting discussions from the Humanist on Edward Mellen Press. I think we acquisitions librarians may hold a different opinion about vanity presses than some faculty who are eager to publish but impatient with the delays and obstacles presented by the traditional avenues of scholarly book publishing. As acquisitions librarians, we have an important role in making the most-responsible use of library funds to acquire high-quality publications for present and future readers. Buying books from established presses which employ peer review and deploy high-level editorial resources to publish quality monographs is one safeguard. Money spent on expensive, poor-quality vanity press publications is money wasted--and money that could have been spent on worthwhile resources. The difference between legitimate scholarly publishers and vanity presses is very wide. For the past fifteen years, I've had the pleasure to serve on the faculty board of the University of Washington Press. Only 5% of the manuscripts submitted to this press survive initial review by the press staff. Manuscripts which survive this review are then submitted to three or four outside readers for their comments about whether the manuscript is worth publishing, whether it represents new scholarship, whether the work meets the highest scholarly standards--and what improvements the manuscript needs. These readers represent academic experts in the subject area of the manuscript. Their comments and suggestions are often shared with the authors to strengthen the manuscript. Manuscripts surviving this review are then submitted to the faculty board for additional scrutiny, going on then for sometimes further extensive editorial improvement. Legitimate scholarly publishers in this way add enormous value to the original manuscript, significantly improving the quality of the eventual book for library users while serving as important gatekeepers for quality. They also expend monies in marketing and distributing their books--and take significant financial risks (even with the occasional subventions from foundations). The imprimatur of such presses is an assurance of quality for libraries who are responsible for adding only high-quality materials to their collections with scarce monograph monies. At a vanity press, there are none of these multiple reviews nor any screening for quality nor any improvements of the manuscript. The press merely acts as a printer for the author, with the buyers assuming the risk of wasting their money (for the cost of the book as well as for the cost of its processing) . If the author's manuscript is of high quality, the book might even be of high quality (if printed and bound well). Even some Mellen books have received good reviews. Since there is no assurance of any consistent quality from such a press, only well-reviewed books from such presses should even be considered for acquisition. Acquiring such books via standing orders or via approval programs does not make good sense. I think it's an appropriate role for us as acquisitions librarians to flag such presses, as we have done in the past with publishers such as the Gilles and Flumiani whose business practices were questionable. (3)------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Peter Stevens (Univ. of Washington) Subject: New OCLC services Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 12:22:08 -0500 The new OCLC Whitepaper on Cataloging and Databases Services Strategy includes several projects under the productivity improvement heading that will impact acquisitions administrators. The two proposed services of greatest interest to acquisitions are 1) a service to automatically provide OCLC/MARC records and set holdings for titles identified by a library's approval plan or firm order vendor, and 2) a service to link selection, acquisitions and cataloging by providing online selection tools, automatically setting holdings and delivering OCLC/MARC records and authority records for firm orders. As part of this latter service, OCLC has already formed an alliance with Bowker to link BIP and PRISM so that libraries could consult BIP online in PRISM, send electronic orders to publishers and vendors, receive OCLC records and have holdings set in OCLC. Have any ACQNET subscribers delineated the pros and cons of these services yet in their acquisitions operations, or given some thought to the issues involved? ****** END OF FILE ****** ACQNET, Vol. 4, No. 1 ****** END OF FILE ******