Re: Snooze/lose (Was: Academics and coursepacks)

On 27 Aug 1998 Bert Boyce <lsboyc[_at_]lsuvm.sncc.lsu.edu> wrote:
>
> On 8/26/98, Albert Henderson <noblestation[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
> >
> > The trend of academic books and journals since the proliferation of the
> > Xerox 914 in the 1960s has been falling sales balanced by rising prices.
> > Typical printings of learned monographs once ranged between 1500 and
> > 2500 copies sold primarily to libraries. Today editions are half or
> > less that number in spite of a doubling of people with advanced degrees.
> > Interlibrary (photocopying)loan, coursepacks, individuals substituting
> > copies for purchases, and loss of library purchasing power all
> > contribute. Underlying the degenerative cycle is the administrative
> > preference for copy machines over books.
>
> I have a problem with this analysis, although the numbers are
> close enough. As I see it, and certainly as things are going in LSU
> Libraries, we don't buy many books anymore because the whole acquisition
> budget goes to trying to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of the
> academic journal and in access charges to organizations like UNCOVER for
> journal articles to which we can no longer afford to subscribe. Holes
> in a journal run may never be recovered, there is some chance of getting
> books a year or so after publication if demand develops. Thus journals
> get priority. We aren't copying books; we don't have them to copy.

Most universities have cut their libraries' share of the budget, as reports from the Mellon Foundation and the National Center for Education Statistics (and others) have pointed out. LSU has made it a priority. Here is LSU's total materials expenditure as reported via the Association of Research Libraries over the last 15 years -- a period when the number of journal articles tracked by major databases doubled worldwide:

YEAR Spending (millions)

1981   $2.5
1982    3.0
1983    3.3
1984    2.9
1985    3.1
1986    3.4
1987    3.5
1988    3.4
1989    3.3
1990    3.3
1991    3.3
1992    4.8
1993    3.2
1994    3.0
1995    3.1
1996    3.4

I think blaming the "skyrocketing cost of the academic journal" is misleading. THE STATUS OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES (NCES 97-413 June 1997)cites an ACRL study suggesting that academic libraries should receive about 6 percent of their university's total budget. That standard has never been achieved. The national average is 3.8% in 1992. Research Universities average 2.6 (public)to 2.8 (private).

In 1968, Jacques Barzun wrote in THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY that universities like Columbia allocated 6 percent to their library. In CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, Columbia professor James Shapiro wrote recently that most faculty never set foot in the library any more (LXV,16:B4-5, Dec 12, 1997)

If photocopying had nothing to do with the decimation of library collections like Columbia and LSU, I'll eat my hat.

Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Fri Aug 28 1998 - 15:44:20 GMT