[Original posting on this topic appeared in COLLDV-L on 15 June and is
reproduced, with corrections, below. The responses follow it.]
From: Paul Metz <pmetz_at_vt.edu>
I hesitate to raise this question because it's the kind of thing that leads
to listserv nausea before it's all played out, but how many of your
directors have, like mine, received a letter from Jonathan Cole, Provost
and Dean of Faculties at Columbia University, saying that _Japanese
Building Practices_, written by Columbia's noted architectural historian
Kenneth
Frampton and published by Van Nostrand on behalf of Columbia's Graduate School
of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, turned out to have wholesale
unattributed quotations from another book, and requesting that libraries
remove it from their collections?
I'm fully expecting to see this get play in the Chronicle before it's all
over. Or maybe I've already missed it.
Our inclination is not to remove the book, but to put a local note in the
catalog record quoting Cole's letter. This is not an issue of removing
something because it's wrong (which we wouldn't do). Nor do we see any
other valid reason to remove the book. But we think Columbia has a
legitimate right to disclaim the authorship implicit in their corporate
role in the book's creation.
Okay, now I'll foolheartedly ask what others think, and duck.
Paul Metz, Director, Collection Management and College-Based Services
Virginia Tech University Libraries
P.O. Box 90001 / Blacksburg VA / 24062-9001
Ph: (540) 231-5663 FAX: (540) 231-3694 e-mail: pmetz_at_vt.edu
=====================================================(1) From: Kerry A Keck
<keckker_at_rice.edu>
We've received the letter at Rice (my art & architecture librarian is also
communicating with colleagues privately re this issue).
We're taking a similar tack (putting a brief local note in the OPAC, and
"tipping in" copies of both the letter and the ALA policy against
expurgating library materials).
We developed this approach in response to a previous request to withdraw a
"suspect" title in 1995 (BLACK LABORERS AND BLACK PROFESSIONALS IN EARLY
AMERICA, 1750-1830 by Robert E. Perdue, where concerns were raised in the
William and Mary Quarterly).
______________________________________________
Kerry Keck - Asst. University Librarian, Collections
Fondren Library - MS44 Phone: 713-348-2926
Rice University Fax: 713-348-5258
6100 S. Main Email: keckker_at_rice.edu
Houston, TX 77005-1892 http://is.rice.edu/~keckker
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(2) From: "STEVEN P. FISHER" <sfisher_at_du.edu>
How about waiting to hear what the author says. Has he made a statement?
I would like to hear both sides of the story before making any decision.
Steve Fisher
University of Denver
-------------------------------------------------------------------
(3) From: Rick Anderson <Rick_Anderson_at_uncg.edu>
I agree with your approach, Paul. Frankly, I think a book
like this can have great value in the library -- if a
professor is teaching a class on publishing ethics (or
something similar) I would imagine she'd like to have an
item like this to put in course reserve for her students
(alongside the work from which it was plagiarized). A note
in the catalog record -- or even tipped into the book
itself -- would make clear to readers exactly what it is
they have in hand.
Rick Anderson
Head Acquisitions Librarian
UNC Greensboro
Received on Wed Jun 28 2000 - 09:16:24 EDT