On 18 Feb, Greg Kuperberg wrote: > Yes, journal cancellations and on-line passwords are a nuisance, but > they have never been as bad for me as the enormous delay ...
But those cancelled journals, and the online passwords - or, more pertinently, the subscription ejournals to which one's library cannot afford passwords - represent a slice of the literature which either remains unobtainable, or obtainable only with difficulty. And the research of researchers deprived of that slice may suffer as a consequence. Librarians worry about this: in fact, libraries partly exist to be the consciences of their institutions (alongside their role as institutional memories) in order to worry about this. We librarians observe the way students and researchers will settle for the material to hand (or screen), and the consequences of that: its effect upon undergraduate assignment writing, and the quality of the sources 'to hand' via Internet search engines, is a major concern in some quarters, which is shared by librarians and academic teachers alike. We see it as our role to recover for users of our services the slices of the literature that they cannot immediately access. In the print world, we did (and still do) it by interlibrary loan, which of course still exists for Greg to use in compensation for the literature he cannot immediately get at. But because of its inconvenience, it is a poor substitute for having an entire literature easily available, and it is an irony of which librarians are well aware that the need for this poor substitute should be growing just at the time that the means of putting the whole literature online, via the net, is now within reach. It is the high cost of that published literature which has caused this situation. The publishers who are responsible for the slice of the literature which you *can* obtain are also responsible for the large - and growing - slice which you cannot! It is for this reason that I believe libraries should be centrally involved in providing the 'insitutional assistance' which Stevan Harnad talks of, in making it as easy as possible for researchers to fill the open archives. And to return to Peter Singer's point about 'incentive realignment', I would contend that 'supported reform of practice' is a better, and more achievable, way forward. Let the support services - libraries foremost - step forward! John ------------ John MacColl Sub-Librarian, Online Services http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk SELLIC Director http://www.sellic.ed.ac.uk Science & Engineering Library, Learning & Information Centre University of Edinburgh Tel: 0131 650 7275 Darwin Library Mobile: 07808 170075 The King's Buildings Fax: 0131 650 6702 Edinburgh EH9 3JU [email protected]
