> There was more curation and filtering involved
> when there were physical journals
That may have been true for large research libraries.
But smaller, undergraduate institutions (like the kind I work for) have never really had the people or the money to do the kind of deep, meaningful curation of journals that you're depicting here. And, frankly, since the stuff was so damn difficult to find and use prior to digitization, there was little point in doing that anyway.
Now, we not only have access to *more* journals than we ever could have had in the past, but even undergraduate students are actually using them. There are some problems with that in itself -- students will often choose journal articles over books because their easier to use now, even though the latter is in many cases better suited to their research needs. But I see it as net plus from a collections point of view for smaller and undergraduate institutions.
> there's no reason why the library is better at
> giving you the password to something it doesn't
> own or control than anyone else
But the stuff ain't free, right?
So, if universities want to continue to provide access to electronic journal articles (and increasingly electronic books) for their faculty and students, then they are going to need an organizational unit within the university that can choose, purchase, and provide access to these subscriptions. And, ideally, develop systems to make the access easier, and have some instructors to teach students about doing research and writing papers.
You can call that organizational unit whatever you want. I call that a library.
--Dave
==================
David Walker
Library Web Services Manager
California State University
http://xerxes.calstate.edu
________________________________________
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Tim Spalding [tim_at_LIBRARYTHING.COM]
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 9:33 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Another nail in the coffin
> 2. For the past decade, usage in academic libraries has shifted from print resources and the system that support the discovery of such (i.e., library catalogs) to online subscription resources and the systems that support their discovery (i.e., databases). There have been a *lot* of new systems and improvements to the latter over the past decade, with many more improvements coming down the pipe. Things are by no means standing still.
I'm interested to know if you think this has its own dangers, as I do.
The academic library of the past that held onto books and journals had
something tangible and valuable to curate. The labored to accumulate
collections for the benefit of their students. As this shifts to being
a middleman for subscription products, I see two problems:
1. The internet cuts out middlemen and lowers management costs. There
was more curation and filtering involved when there were physical
journals. Digitization largely nixes curation costs, and filtering
costs have migrated up the stack (ie., libraries choose packages more
than individual offerings). The idea of library curation of
subscriptions persists because it resembles the former situation, but
over the long term there's no reason why the library is better at
giving you the password to something it doesn't own or control than
anyone else.
2. As the model shifts from ownership to rental, the library
increasingly becomes a rent-collector, not an independent farmer. The
library of the past could, through judicious management, accumulate
real and lasting value—the sum total of decades of judicious
collection development. With digitization, that value is only as
significant as the last check to Elsevier, and the judicious
accumulation of value for students' benefit becomes a thin
administrative layer between what the students need and what the
digital sellers want for it.
Libraries have always been "IP-licensing centers," but digitization
and the "data rental" thins out and brutalizes the model.
That's my opinion. I'm glad to hear how I'm wrong here.
Received on Tue May 05 2009 - 13:38:24 EDT