"Paul M. Gherman" <[email protected]> said: >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.
The "Productivity Paradox" suggests otherwise. It was probably documented first by William J. Baumol and Sue Anne Batey Blackman in an article titled Electronics, the cost disease, and the operation of libraries. (Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 1983 34,3:181-191). They found that what they called "the cost disease in libraries" was rooted in technology. Computerization and the falling prices of computer systems were expected to reduce the cost of libraries. Yet the decline of prices increased the share of costly labor-intensive activities. Most readers of this article didn't believe it at the time. The Productivity Paradox then materialized in industry and government. Eventually the National Academy of Sciences organized a panel to study it (without the aid of an economist, for reasons that I will never understand). Instead of occuring naturally as a matter of operating economies, reductions in library spending have been handed down from above, justified by a vision of photocopying efficiencies that never materialized. The last ARL study reported that an interlibrary photocopy took over two weeks to appear. I consider "two weeks" to be "two weeks too late." University managers and the science bureaucracy continue to disregard the clear recommendations of information scientists who have studied the information explosion. With the continuing growth of R&D, real resources and library research are required to connect researchers to findings. Even Paul Ginsparg wrote, "There remains a pressing need for organization of intellectual value-added, which by definition cannot be automated even in principle, and that leaves significant opportunities for any agency willing to listen to what researchers want and need." (1996 UNESCO paper) Albert Henderson Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 <[email protected]> . .
