I agree with Fred. I'm not sure where this notion that librarians are
anti green OA has come from. I've not seen any publication by a
librarian to that effect, and it certainly doesn't correspond to views
informally expressed to me by librarians.
Charles
Professor Charles Oppenheim
Head
Department of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE1 3TU
Tel 01509-223065
Fax 01509 223053
e mail c.oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
Behalf Of FrederickFriend
Sent: 23 April 2007 17:25
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Librarians and OA advocacy.
This view is very unfair to many members of the library community, who
are already doing what Andrew Adams suggests. Many institutional
repositories are already being managed by librarians and many library
directors are working with their university management to secure
mandates. The quantity of content in repositories would not be as high
as it is now were it not for the efforts of librarians. To criticise
allies and potential allies does not help the cause of OA. All
librarians have to work within the policies of their institution and
some do not have as much freedom of action as others, but many
understand and have no problem with the way in which their role is
changing.
Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL E-mail ucylfjf_at_ucl.ac.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew A. Adams" <A.A.Adams_at_READING.AC.UK>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 11:38 AM
Subject: Librarians and OA advocacy.
>A recent email discussion stimulated the following comment, which I was
>encouraged to post here more generally.
>
> Some librarians are engaged in lobbying locally, nationally and
> internationally in ways which undermine our goal of 100% OA. This is
> not because they are evil, but because they respond to a different set
> of pressures than do researchers. It should be recognised that
> supporting Green OA requires something of a change in emphasis for
> librarians' roles.
> Librarians (along with many other groups in late twentieth century
> academe)
> have to some extent lost touch with their principle missions. Academic
> institutional librarians, as with everyone else in academia apart from
> those performing research or directly supporting student's learning,
> are there to provide the members of the university (the staff and
> students) with the support they need to perform their role
> (researching/teaching/learning).
> The
> increasing managerialism in academia (unfortunately true almost
> everywhere and not restricted to the UK although it is one of the
> worst) means that many other groups, not least the managers
> themselves, have started to see their job as achieving their targets,
> rather that contributing to the research and teaching mission of
> universities.
>
> In performing that contribution, it is time that librarians
> re-assessed their approach. In the past, the job of librarians was to
> provide access for their own staff to the output of other
> institutions. A very minor part of their mission used to be providing
> advice to academics on where to publish, but that role has been
> increasingly replaced by online access to such information. Other
> online access has gradually replaced a significant part of the
> information they have provided in paper form. They need an adjusted
> mission and this requires a change of viewpoint. That change should
> include providing the librarianship skill in helping to provide not
> just an institutional repository, but a repository which helps to
> maximise the impact of the work produced by their own researchers. The
> first stage in this is to throw their weight behind the creation of an
> IR and an OA mandate. There is then significant work for librarians in
> supporting and maintaining metadata categories in the repository,
> along with "digital preservation" use. IRs will not undermine the need
> for librarians, but they will require something of a change of role.
> The move to Green OA is an opportunity for librarians to be
> instrumental in defining their new role in facilitating two way
> information exchange between researchers, rather than acting as one
> way conduits for access to external information.
>
> --
> *E-mail*a.a.adams_at_rdg.ac.uk******** Dr Andrew A Adams
> **snail*27 Westerham Walk********** School of Systems Engineering
> ***mail*Reading RG2 0BA, UK******** The University of Reading
> ****Tel*+44-118-378-6997*********** Reading, United Kingdom
> **http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~sis00aaa/**
>
Received on Mon Apr 23 2007 - 19:07:19 BST