I have to say that I disagree with Arthur Sale. I fully support the
objective of getting all of an institution's peer-reviewed published output
on to its OA repository, but to call the other possible uses of an IR
'low-priority' is a one-eyed view of the purposes of a university. A
university library may possess unique special collections of primary
material that is available nowehere else in the world. Is making that
material available to the world a low-priority issue? A university may wish
to make teaching materials readily available to distance-learning students;
this may be low-priority to Arthur, but it isn't low-priority to students in
the Australian outback, I would guess.
Just because we have a particular cause, and our own priorities, does not
mean that others within our institutions cannot have their own different
priorities. The casue of achieving a fully functioning IR in every
university can be best served by forming alliances with others within our
institutions, not by belittling their own different priorities.
Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University, UK.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Arthur Sale" <ahjs_at_OZEMAIL.COM.AU>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 8:41 PM
Subject: Re: Functioning IRs - today's real realities
> True. A lot of people are using the term IR for sideshows such as
> digitizations of historical collections and image collections, not to
> mention learning objects and e-publishing, while only five universities in
> the world have so far achieved near 100% content of peer reviewed freely
> available articles.
>
> It is truly strange to observe such a lot of misguided people wasting
> their
> time and their institution's money on low-priority issues. When we have
> achieved world coverage of peer-reviewed articles, then is the time to
> spend
> on some of these unclear (and much more expensive) issues.
>
> Arthur Sale
Received on Tue Dec 13 2005 - 13:17:54 GMT