Re: Institutional versus personal subscriptions ALBERT HENDERSON 07 Jun 2006 21:57 UTC
On 7 Jun 2006 "Belvadi, Melissa" <mbelvadi@maryville.edu> wrote: > Things have changed a LOT in the decades since some of those studies > were done. > Even 1997 is very old by comparison with the new document delivery > technologies and services that libraries have. In 1997, my library had > about 800 print subscriptions, and that was about it - everything else > meant a lengthy paper ILL transaction or a trip to another library. > Today we have over 14,000 titles full text online (that don't show up in > the budgets as individual title subscriptions), plus with a combination > of ILL systems like Ariel, Odyssey, and ILLiad, we have turnaround times > of about 3 business days to get almost every other periodical published [snip] > In today's academic library, particularly when it comes to STM > (Science/Technology/Medicine) fields, the name of the game isn't > collection anymore, it's access. And when it comes to serials, I'm > seeing a long-term trend that ceases to look at annual subscriptions to > titles as the basic purchasing unit, but rather at individual articles > as the basic unit. It requires a major paradigm change for serials > budgeting, and a lot of institutions, including their accrediting > bodies, haven't figured it out yet, but the serials world has changed > incredibly rapidly in just the last few years. I have no argument with this, much of it was pioneered by publishers in the interest of dissemination. Some years ago I edited a book that surveyed early electronic publication: databases. My concerns about funding focus more on (A) the loss of browsable paper copies of niche journals and newsletters that specialists read cover to cover -- this is likely where grant money is still used to work around library cuts, (B) cutbacks in publishers' production resulting in the rejection of informative papers, (C) increases in publishers' backlogs, delaying circulation of new information, (D) the difficulty starting new specialty journals given the financial hostility of the market, (E) the decimation of book budgets and collections. I also have concerns about publishers skimping on peer review and about the preservation of digital information, given the likelihood of massive "upgrades" in software and media. Only ten years ago, economist David J Brown warned, "none of the new media can survive if there is insufficient market." ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING AND LIBRARIES, 1996. Today's innovation is likely to be restricted to a handful of huge publishers, some of whom were known to be unfriendly to new specialties 40 years ago. Thank you for your comment. Sincerely, Albert Henderson