RE: E-Reserves question

[Kevin Smith <kevin.l.smith@xxxxxxxx>]

Monograph purchases are being cut across the board, they are just more deeply
felt at university presses.  We do not select or "target" presses, contrary to
what you seem to think, we allocate our shrinking monies for books to
selectors based on discipline.  And whether or not libraries should be
burdened with the cost of licensing, that is the reality; stop blaming the
messenger.

Now you should answer my question -- is it better for us to buy the blanket
campus license or continue to buy monographs from Penn State University
Press?

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 10:25 AM
To: Kevin Smith; Peter B. Hirtle; digital-copyright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: digital-copyright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: E-Reserves question

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)