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

On 15 Sep 1998, David Lenander <d-lena[_at_]maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>
> Albert Henderson <noblestation[_at_]compuserve.com> wrote:
> >
> > Law suits are expensive. If it were not for photocopying of journals
> > -- and the devestating effect on the market for subscriptions -- we
> > would not have seen Williams and Wilkins v. United States (420 U.S.
> > 176. 1975) or American Geophysical Union et al v. Texaco (S.D.N.Y.
> > filed May 6, 1985). Science publishers would not have organized
> > the Copyright Clearance Center as a legal alternative to infringement.
> >
> > What brand of relish do you prefer?
>
> Mr. Katz should hold off on that hat. If photocopying is responsible
> for a "devestating [sic] effect on the market for subscriptions" then
> why do we now subscribe to thousands more than we did a couple of
> decades ago?

The 1996-97 statstics of the Association of Research Libraries indicate that serials purchased has dropped 6+ between 1986 and 1996. Monographs dropped 13% Subscription cancelations to academic journals have numbered in the thousands since the library copier was endorsed by legislation. ARL statistics don't give much information about the 1960s and 1970s, or we would see a sharper drop.

> I think that photocopying HAS had some effects, and (as suggested a
> while back) many professors no longer darken our doors, instead sending
> assistants to photocopy articles for them. But this just means that
> they are reading photocopies in their offices instead of reading the
> original journals in the library.

Before library photocopying, they read "duplicate" subscriptions in their offices and made copies there.

> There's another good reason for this: We have hardly any place left TO
> read a journal on-site. We've just ordered more shelving which will
> probably eliminate most of the remaining seating space. I think that
> professors probably subscribe to more journals today than they did years
> ago. But now, they may have to subscribe to little journals in their
> specialties that we can't even consider picking up--which may mean that
> aside from (perhaps) JAMA and New England Journal of Medicine, they
> don't all get the main journals any more. We certainly subscribe to a
> far smaller percentage of the total available journals in our area, and
> purchase even less of the annually produced health science monographs.
>
> Practically speaking, interlibrary lending is an almost unnoticeable
> amount of the use by our faculty of medical literature. Photocopying
> by libraries to lend to other libraries happens constantly, but if we
> borrow 5 articles from the same journal in the same year, we have to
> subscribe to it. And we'd want to, as it's far more costly to get a
> photocopy from another library. In a 1970s study, we found that the
> average cost of an interlibrary loan (to the library, we still don't
> charge our users) was $30. Even if that figure was the same today,
> $150 wouldn't buy a lot of pricier titles, but if 5 users in a year
> were willing to wait for interlibrary loans, it would signal a demand
> that was much higher. Most of the time, when we offer an interlibrary
> loan to one of our users the offer is declined: they can't wait that
> long. This is probably why, by the way, undergraduate use is so low.
> (Most do not plan out their research early enough to know that they'll
> need an article in time to request it--even if it only takes a week or
> so--and still get their paper done on time).

Citation studies and reviews indicate many US researchers are unaware of published findings, particularly if they are published in a foreign journal.

> I'd also like to blame the University's inadequate support of our
> subscription budget. But we actually get about all the journals we can
> handle. We already need a new building, and our staff is larger than
> ever, just to handle all we have and do now. If our acquisitions budget
> were suddenly tripled, where would we put everything, how would we order
> it, and who would put it away?

If your acquisitions budget tripled, your salaries and buildings would have to increase.

> (Incidentally, our users couldn't possibly begin to use it all
> effectively).

They need publishers to invest in reviews, monographs, translations, and reference works.

> The reason that publishers have to produce fewer copies is because of
> producing more and more different journals. We have eliminated almost
> all second copies--not because of photocopying but in order to add more
> new titles. As it is, we have almost eliminated non-English language
> titles. Our users don't read them, and we've sacrificed them for more
> English (and this really means American, most of our users can't even
> keep up with American publications--we hardly ever add new British
> titles, Medical practice and research are significantly different)
> language matericals. Only a couple of decades ago, we could feel fairly
> comfortable about being a comprehensive medical library with a couple of
> thousand subscriptions. Today, we subscribe to more than twice that,
> and realize that we can't be comprehensive in any area.

The NLM totals 25,000 serials. I think MEDLINE covers a small fraction of that and no books, conference papers, or reference works.

> What may be having a FAR greater impact on library subscriptions than
> photocopy machines is computerized access to journals. I won't go into
> that, but a presentation by the director of the UC at SF medical library
> director a couple of years ago was truly an eye-opener for me. After
> laying claim to being one of the premier institutions in terms of the
> number of subscriptions to medical serials and comprehensiveness of
> their collections, they pared back subscriptions to less than 2000 (as
> I recall, maybe it was 2500) in favor of providing a computerized desktop
> access to a far smaller number of full-text journals for their faculty
> and the staffs of a number of other schools and hospitals and clinics in
> the entire area. This was a project funded partly by the publishers,
> but obviously, they'd had to use a lot of their subscription money for
> it as well. Notice, though, it was with the encouragement and collusion
> of the publishers. Or should I say, some of the publishers.

That would be Red Sage, sponsored by UCSF, Springer Verlag and Lucent Technologies and reported in 1997. It was a success on campus but it failed tests of commercial viability particularly in the eyes of the university. You can read the report on Springer's web site: http://www.springer-ny.com/press/redsage.

Albert Henderson, Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY <70244.1532[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Thu Sep 17 1998 - 02:00:49 GMT