on 26 Jul 2001 David Goodman <[email protected]> wrote:
> About the likely factors, from the standpoint of a librarian:
>
> Librarians will not cancel the conventional journals if they are used. They
> will (at least if they are rational) cancel them when they show no use. It
> is also of course likely that they will cancel them because of cost,
> especially if the cost per use figure is particularly high.
>
> What good librarians should and do look at, is not primarily the opinions
> of their users, but the actual beavior of their users. Expensive unused
> publications get canceled. The most any library can expect is enough money
> to buy what the users do use, and not also everything they think they are
> using or think they ought to be using. We do not buy for our own personal
> reading; we buy as agents for the users to acquire what they need in the
> format they prefer.
The shortfall in support of research is probably
why so many scientists use grant money to purchase
subsriptions to the journals that are not supplied
by their libraries.
This is too bad for students and other investigators,
present and future, since subscriptions and books
purchased with grant money are under no obligation
to be shared.
Albert Henderson
Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000
<[email protected]>
