RE: E-Reserves question

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You failed to answer two of my questions, Kevin: why university 
presses (and why emphasize small university presses) when so many 
monographs are also published by commercial academic presses like 
Palgrave, Taylor & Francis, etc.; and why should the library be 
burdened with paying for a license that covers university-wide 
copying?

I'll make two points in response to your last paragraph: 1) as a 
member of the advisory board of Project Muse, I long advocated adding 
books to the journals database, and the decision to do so was made 
during my final year on that board; 2) I am one of the most outspoken 
advocates of open access in university press publishing, to the point 
where I have taken a minority position within AAUP itself on certain 
controversial issues surrounding OA. So, it's not as though i haven't 
been working long and hard over many years for change in the way the 
system of scholarly communication operates.

Sandy Thatcher


At 1:26 PM +0000 9/6/11, Kevin Smith wrote:
> You are free to question the priorities of universities, but it is a 
> luxury that does not change the realities we have to deal with in 
> libraries.
>
> The reason university presses would be hardest hit by a reallocation 
> of monies for a blanket license is because so much of our money is 
> tied up in big deals, where we have limited negotiation room.  It is 
> very hard to simply cancel an entire "big deal" because, although 
> much of what would be lost are low-use journals, they are inevitably 
> bundled with very high-use, top-tier items.  Lots of people would 
> have their work impaired if those items are lost.  With small 
> academic presses, unfortunately, we have more flexibility, and the 
> losses are not felt as broadly.  That does not mean we want to cut 
> university press monographs, or that we believe it is good for 
> scholarship.  It is only that in a world with few options, this is 
> one that is still open to us, if we are forced to move that way.
>
> Instead of spending your time lobbying librarians about how to spend 
> the collections budget, everyone, including small academic presses, 
> would be better served if you worked with fellow publishers to 
> introduce more flexibility into bundled packages.  We didn't create 
> the situation in which small academic presses are so at risk, and 
> attempts to force a blanket permissions license on us only makes it 
> worse.
>
> Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
> Director of Scholarly Communications
> Duke University, Perkins Library
> P.O. Box 90193
> Durham, NC 27708
> 919-668-4451
> kevin.l.smith@xxxxxxxx
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sandy Thatcher [mailto:sandy.thatcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 9:08 AM
> To: Kevin Smith; Peter B. Hirtle; digital-copyright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: digital-copyright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: E-Reserves question
>
> Let me reply in this way. I'm not questioning whether librarians are 
> faced with hard decisions, but I am questioning the overall 
> priorities of universities that allocate more to assistant football 
> coaches than to academics. (Yes, i do think coaches' salaries are 
> out of control. If you knew how much I've written about 
> intercollegiate athletic reform, you would not have raised that 
> question.) That is not anything librarians can change, of course. 
> But I do question why libraries should be burdened with the 
> responsibility for paying for a license that covers the entire 
> university--administrative copying, copying for coursepacks, 
> etc.--when only e-reserves are the direct responsibility of 
> libraries. I'll bet that at some universities this expense is taken 
> from a more general administrative budget and not imposed on the 
> library solely, or ;perhaps covered by a student fee.
> Am I wrong about that? I needled Peter about university presses 
> because he specifically mentioned university presses as the target 
> for cutting, whereas we all know that monographs are published by a 
> lot of commercial publishers also. So, I wondered, why target 
> university presses for cutting?
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
> At 12:06 PM +0000 9/6/11, Kevin Smith wrote:
> > What seems most remarkable about this diatribe is that you, Sandy, do
> > not seem to feel that the salary of an assistant football coach is
> > exorbitant.
> >
> > Seriously, what is really immature is the facile assumption that
> > librarians are in a position to decide between buying monographs and
>  >hiring another football coach.  Just to be clear, we are not in a
> > position to supplement our collections allocations from the athletic
> > budget.  Even the people who usually give us those allocations, the
> > chief academic officers, are not able to make that call.  They too have
> > to live within the budget priorities set by Boards of Trustees.
> > You can complain all you like about those priorities, but please do not
> > accuse us of immaturity for trying to make responsible decisions with
> > the money entrusted to us.
> >
> > Peter is absolutely right.  If we are forced to purchase an annual
> > blanket license, there is no place for that money to come from except
> > our collection budgets.  I have several times been part of specific
> > discussions on this point, and have always been convinced that as it
> > now stands the annual license is too much money for too little
> > coverage, and its cost would seriously impair our ability to buy other
> > materials.  It is not that we want to "punish" university presses, but
> > they are one of the few sets of vendors with whom we can adjust
> > incremental expenses.  You have to get over yourself and look at the
> > wider world we inhabit, where choices like this are not optional.
> >
> > So-called "big deals" have many problems, but they provide a large
> > amount of access to our users, and that is our bottom line.  In fact,
> > the annual license would function a lot like another big deal
> > -- it would be a substantial drain on our resources and a price we
> > could not control over time -- yet it would not provide us any access
> > to new materials.  Instead, it would inevitably elbow out some
> > purchases of new scholarship.
> >
> > You posed a rhetorical question about priorities -- football over
> > scholarship.  I want to ask you a question that is not at all
> > rhetorical, but one librarians face all the time.  Would you, as the
> > former director of a university press, prefer that we buy an annual
> > campus license even if it means not buying new monographs that you
> > publish?  Do you really believe that is the best outcome for
> > scholarship?
> >
> > Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
> > Director of Scholarly Communications
> > Duke University, Perkins Library
> > P.O. Box 90193
> > Durham, NC 27708
> > 919-668-4451
> > kevin.l.smith@xxxxxxxx
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Sandy Thatcher [mailto:sandy.thatcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: Monday, September 05, 2011 8:34 PM
> > To: Peter B. Hirtle; digital-copyright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Cc: digital-copyright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: RE: E-Reserves question
> >
> > I am curious to know what you consider "exorbitant." The blanket
> > license that the CCC offers would cost most universities in Div. 1 less
> > than the annual salary of an assistant football coach.  Do universities
> > consider football more important than providing course materials?
> > (Don't answer that question!)
> >
> > One can't reduce expenditures on the big deals?  What is sacred about
> > big deals? Already they have been discontinued at a number of
> > universities.
> >
> > So, an adverse decision in the GSU case will lead librarians to take
> > revenge on university presses by cancelling monograph purchases?
> > That's certainly a mature attitude.
> >
> >
> > At 11:50 AM -0400 9/5/11, Peter B. Hirtle wrote:
> > > As Sandy well knows, there have been no court decisions regarding
> > > reserves either before or after the 1976 Act, so it would be difficult
> > > to conclude what constitutes "fair use" or even what the consensus
> > > regarding fair use may have been. The Georgia State case will provide
> > > some guidance on the matter.  Until then, it would be dangerous to
> > > assume that court decisions based on commercial use of material or
> > > taking place in a commercial setting apply to educational
> > > institutions.  The ALA statement on ereserves that I cited in my
> > > message is the best current guidance libraries have on fair use in 
> > > a reserves setting.
>  >>
> > > On the GSU case, I am optimistic that the court will follow the plain
> > > letter of the law.  A decision that encouraged libraries to pay
> > > exorbitant permission fees to the CCC would be disastrous for most
> > > academic publishing.  In many universities, permission fees would come
>  >>from the acquisition budget.  Since one can't reduce expenditures on
> > > the "big deals," that money would come from the money spent for
> > > monographics.  At Cornell, we narrowly avoided dropping a third of the
> > > university presses from our approval plan last year; a decision in
> > > favor of the AAP and CCC would most certainly mean that we would no
> > > longer acquire titles from those publishers.
> > >
> > > Peter Hirtle
>
>
> --
> Sanford G. Thatcher
> 8201 Edgewater Drive
> Frisco, TX  75034-5514
> e-mail: sandy.thatcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Phone: (214) 705-1939
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sanford.thatcher
>
> "If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying."-John Ruskin (1865)
>
> "The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people 
> who can write know anything."-Walter Bagehot (1853)


--
Sanford G. Thatcher
8201 Edgewater Drive
Frisco, TX  75034-5514
e-mail: sandy.thatcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Phone: (214) 705-1939
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sanford.thatcher

"If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying."-John Ruskin (1865)

"The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people 
who can write know anything."-Walter Bagehot (1853)