Gloriana St. Clair is University Librarian at Carnegie Mellon University. Her current interests center around issues of scholarly communication in the academy, building the digital library of the future, and creating a strong library organization. Dr. St. Clair earned her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 1970, and has been at Carnegie Mellon for five years.
Erika Linke is Associate University Librarian at Carnegie Mellon University. Her current interests are building library collections; copyright, intellectual property and scholarly communication; and access to information and research resources. She received her Masters degree in Library Science from the University of Minnesota in 1978, and has been at Carnegie Mellon for 19 years. |
Chapter 19, selection: The Library of the Future Academic libraries typically have a mission to support the knowledge-based activities of their colleges and universities. In general, their collections, like those of Carnegie Mellon, reflect the teaching and research initiatives that engage faculty and students. Content for these collections is an aggregate of the various disciplines scholarly communications efforts. While the library collects some materials that are created through commercial or trade publishing venues, the majority of the collection has been refereed by discipline experts and published under their auspices. These collecting practices inexorably tie the future of the library to the future of the scholarly communications system. In May 2000, the Association of American Universities (AAU) in conjunction with the Association for Research Libraries (ARL) published a set of guidelines for scholars to consider in communicating their research to their colleagues. Signatories included university administrators, discipline leaders, faculty, and librarians. They agreed that the "current system of scholarly publishing has become too costly for the academic community to sustain." New publishing models have emerged and should be used to stem the escalation of prices and volume. The result is that every faculty member annually gets a list of journals that are going to be discontinued. The guideline signatories assigned most blame in the situation to a handful of commercial publishers. Duane Webster, the Executive Director of the ARL, notes "The real call is for faculty to understand what is going on in the marketplace, what is going on in technology, and to be a part of the debate . . . And right now, theyre not." Several recommendations require faculty action. When economists consider this ongoing problem, they inevitably comment that the marketplace will correct itself. One factor that has slowed that correction is a unique quality of scholarly journalsthey do not easily substitute for one another. A New York Times letter writer noted that Brain Research costs more per pound than a Mercedes. Most people act in the marketplace by buying cheaper cars but the number of equivalent cheaper journals is quite small. Creating such journals is an important initiative. In the same way that generic drugs offer consumers a less expensive alternative to brand name drugs and operate as complete substitutes in the economic marketplace, generic-priced journals need to be created as alternatives.
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