> 2. In the general evolution of electronic communication, there will > be considerable pain for publishers and librarians. Why for librarians? Can they not do something better with their money than what is now being spent in the "serials crisis"?
I think with increased electronic information whether free or commercial, the eventual costly infrastructure of libraries as we know them today will decrease as will the current number of staff working in libraries. And the library as institution as we know it today will change. We may become more like a publisher, note HighWire Press or Project Muse, we may become more like AskJeeves, or an interactive web presence there to support scholarship with a far better rate of correct answers than the current web answering services. ( There is a great deal of interest and action on the part of libraries to create a mega scholarly website.) But Andrew is correct that there will be pain for those librarians who cling to old ways of delivering information, just as there has been pain for other organizations and those who work in them that cannot change rapidly in a changing environment. Actually I think the track record for change in libraries is quite good. A bit quicker than publishers have been willing to change. The initial OpenArchive meeting was funded in part by library organizations, and there we more than a few librarians in attendance. Some of us will be hurt by the migration to a fully electronic publishing world, and others of us will be delighted by the change and excitement. And Andrew and I can retire to our tents and get back to our research, reaping the benefits of the give-away corpus, free at last! Amen! ************************************************************************ Andrew Odlyzko [email protected] AT&T Labs - Research voice: 973-360-8410 http://www.research.att.com/~amo fax: 973-360-8178 ************************************************************************ Paul M. Gherman University Librarian 611B General Library 419 21st Avenue South Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37240 Office: (615) 322-7120 Fax: (615) 343-8279 [email protected]
