Re: Online Self-Archiving: Distinguishing the Optimal from the Optional

From: Tim Brody <tdb01r_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 10:44:31 -0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arthur P. Smith" <apsmith_at_APS.ORG>

> The main focus of your "tragic loss" article was the obsolescence of
> paper, and the resulting consequences. One consequence which was perhaps
> not widely anticipated is expanded access to research journal content -
> now available from
> the desktop instead of having to go to the library. And the increased
> availability that
> consortium deals and other special arrangements are providing. So the
> library as a physical
> facility is less useful, but as a provider of information, surely the
> utility
> of every library has grown over the past 8 years? Are the other things
> you mention
> (phone, fax, email, etc.) really a substitute for traditional scholarly
> communication?

The SPARC paper (http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/ir.html) identified four
features of scholarly publishing: registration, certification, awareness,
and preservation.

Given the growth of e-journals, consortia agreements, and aggregators (or,
in the case of the big publishers, simply a single publisher's holdings),
what role does the institutional library - and it's librarians - have in the
future of scholarly publishing?

Is the future of the research library a web page of user names and
passwords, along with a form for "request-a-journal"?

(... if the research literature was Open Access, perhaps even this would be
supplanted by a single Google-search?)

All the best,
Tim.
Received on Fri Dec 13 2002 - 10:44:31 GMT

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