Lost in the Cloud
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.55n4.195Abstract
Digital technologies, renewed attention to the purposes of higher education, and changing models for scholarship and learning challenge our historic understandings of research libraries and their collections. Common assumptions and goals are giving way to diverse local agendas, many of which also reflect increasingly limited budgets. Cooperative ventures are taking new forms as well, with straitened resources again the rule. Our adaptation to this uncertain environment requires research libraries to reconsider the elements that are now necessary for success.
References
() Research libraries make up an elusive category. The principles and criteria for membership in the Association of Research Libraries, which includes about 120 repositories in the United States and Canada, provide a working definition. See Association of Research Libraries, About ARL, Membership, Principles of Membership in the Association of Research Libraries, nThomas S Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1996)n () Project Information Literacy: A Large-Scale Study about Early Adults and their Research Habits, nChris Anderson, '“The Long Tail,”' Wired 12 no. 10 (Oct. 2004): (accessed Mar. 21, 2011) provides a classic modern analysis of uneven distributions of demand and use across large sets, specifically suggesting that digital technologies can facilitate marketing and access that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive.www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.htmln () The literature on serials pricing issues is immense. An excellent, exhaustive starting point is Charles W. Bailey Jr.,
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
, vers. 79 (Dec. 13, 2010), n () The extraordinary price increases announced by the Nature Publishing Group precipitated highly public exchanges with the University of California during the fall of 2010. See, for example, Jennifer Howard, “Nature Publishing Group Defends Its Price Increase for U. of California,”
Chronicle of Higher Education
(June 9, 2010), nGlenn S McGuigan, Robert D Russell, '“The Business of Academic Publishing: A Strategic Analysis of the Academic Journal Publishing Industry and its Impact on the Future of Scholarly Publishing,”' Electronic Journal of Academic & Special Librarianship 9 no. 3 (Winter 2008): (accessed Feb. 15, 2011).http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v09n03/mcguigan_g01.htmln'The Italian aggregator Fabrizio Serra has become notorious for acquiring scholarly titles in the humanities and social sciences whose prices then explode. See Claudio Giunta, “Quanto (ci) costa la cultura accademica,”' La rivista dei libri (Feb. 2010): (accessed Mar. 21, 2011).www.claudiogiunta.it/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/quanto-ci-costa-leditoria-accademica_.pdfn () California Institute of Technology's co-pay approach to providing articles in journals to which CalTech does not subscribe is described in Caltech Library Services: How to Find a Journal Article, nMark Ware, Michael Mabe, The STM Report: An Overview of Scientific and Scholarly Journal Publishing (Sept. 2009) (accessed Feb. 15, 2011).n 'arXiv Support' () (accessed Feb. 15, 2011).n () Many OA journals (some calculations put the number as high as 75 percent) charge no fees. Additional data compiled by Stuart Shieber and others suggest that OA charges, as applied by journals with Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) impact factors, average around $1,100. PLoS One carries a fee of $1,350. See Stuart Shieber, “What Percentage of Open-Access Journals Charge Publications Fees?” online posting, May 29, 2009, The Occasional Pamphlet, n () The combined issue of
Collection Management
, no. 3/4 (2010) is devoted to patron-driven acquisitions. Many conference sessions also have considered this topic, for example the 2010 Charleston Conference program, nJudy Luther, University Investment in the Library: What's the Return? A Case Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign () White Paper no. 1 (San Diego, Calif.: Library Connect Editorial Office, Elsevier, 2008), n () “Radical collaboration” is proclaimed in the joint statement of University Librarians Anne Kenney (Cornell University) and Jim Neal (Columbia University) on the 2CUL homepage, nBorrow Direct is a rapid book request and delivery system that enables faculty, staff, and students at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and MIT to search the combined library catalogs of these libraries and directly request expedited delivery of circulating items.n () See, for example, descriptions of foundation-supported, open-source systems and tools such as Project Bamboo (n () See, for example, Robert H. Kieft and Lizanne Payne, “A Nation-Wide Planning Framework for Large-Scale Collaboration on Legacy Print Monograph Collections,”
Collaborative Librarianship
, no. 4(2010): 229–33, n
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