*************************************************************************** * * © 1998 Johann van Reenen * PLEASE NOTE: This is a work in progress for JEP: Journal of Electronic * Publishing & contains copyrighted material * *************************************************************************** LIBRARY CONSUMERISM IN THE DIGITAL AGE. Johann van Reenen, Director Centennial Sci.& Eng. Library University of New Mexico. The strongest impression left me from the Faxon Colloquium was that of unassertive, almost apologetic consumers (librarians, many of them deans and directors) trying to accommodate aggressive, profit oriented packagers of scholarly products manufactured at America's universities and research institutes. This impression was strengthened afterwards when I attended three sessions for science and technology audiences at ALA Mid-Winter with the added, and even more disturbing, realization that librarians were planning strategies to cope with the cost increases of scitech information in the presence of these packagers (or more appropriately, re-manufacturers). Often representatives from commercial publishers were invited guests and were steering the proceedings towards discussions of product improvement rather than appropriate, market driven pricing. An improved product is still only as good as its price, if it's not affordable it can't be used. Would academic or public librarians ever be invited to sit in on the strategic planning sessions of large profit-oriented publishers where war plans are being devised to increase profits to shareholders? Back at work, my colleagues were agreeing that this is a bad situation, but What can we do! We are caught between a rock (commercial publishers) and a hard place (legitimate demands of users). There is much we can do, locally and nationally. There is a risk in listing them in public and electronic forum such as this, thus giving our plans away, but I will do so nevertheless; keeping a few fermenting ideas up my sleeve as many of my colleagues are probably doing. ACTING LIKE A TRUE CONSUMER It is easier to ACT your way into a new way of thinking than to THINK your way into a new way of acting. Unfortunately I do not know who to credit for the is quote, but I have lived this way for a long time and experienced the benefits. It is time librarians and the millions of consumers they represent begin to act their way into a new way of thinking about what it means to produce and distribute scientific and technological information vital to the health and well being of the nation and of individuals. A true consumer looks for a wide variety of products and prices to choose from, tries to find vendors that will give special prices or privileges for buying in bulk (sometimes these are intermediaries), demands customization and products manufactured to scale, and responds best when he/she is allowed some involvement in the production, performance, and price of the product. An innovative consumer creates new ways of production if all else fails or fosters and supports competition when the above criteria are not met. My contention is that librarians are not acting yet as true consumers should. Until we do, we cannot blame predatory publishers for taking advantage of the situation. (Please do not blame the Journal of Electronic Publishing or the organization I work for this nastiness - these ideas represent my own, not necessarily theirs) ACTING OUR WAY INTO A NEW WAY OF BEING [ We can act locally, nationally, and subversively! These options are discussed below.] LOCAL ACTIONS are possible and available to each librarian. ITS A GOOD THING: The first, and still foremost, boon of the electronic revolution is that communication is easy, accessible, and almost free. Sample action 1: Tell your customers about the scholarly publishing cycle, its crisis, and their role in it. See the excellent analysis by Malcom Getz; An economic perspective on E-publishing in academia., in a past issue of this journal. [EDITOR: Please make link here to: http://www.press.umich.edu:80/jep/03-01/getz.html] Sample action 2: Involve customers in the difficult choices libraries have to make and continually expand the menu of options from which they can make mix-and match decisions. Sample action 3: Create consensus for effective, focused action. For instance, target products from a particular re-manufacturer for cancellation - having prepared customers for the difficult consequences, even the possibility of their becoming less competitive in the short term. Sample action 4: Pilot a variety of electronic options to scitech fulltext (preferably with joint or innovation funding), and evaluate rigorously, relying on users to give the green light to eventual purchase. Sample action 5: Join consortia that REALLY get better prices and that have assertive electronic licensing negotiation teams. Sample action 6: Do not sign a license agreement when a subscription is an option. Subscriptions benefit from all the rights and protections of the existing copyright law and fair use guidelines; licenses may override these. Sample action 7: Learn to take risks collectively and individually. This allows one to speak up and lead in your local (e.g. university) community where information is discussed, and to be assertive as a consumer. Sample action 8: Keep informed about the evolving information landscape, get involved, and support colleagues who put their necks out. NATIONAL ACTIONS are currently underway involving most of the major players, including consumer organizations such as the AAU, ALA, SLA, and others. ITS A GOOD THING: Libraries have an enormous combined purchasing power. THE SAD THING: Some underplay and undervalue the role the ARL and other organizations are playing in building understanding and consensus. This results in too many libraries or consortia breaking rank by purchasing products or versions of products that violates the rules of responsible consumerism. Sample action 1: Libraries should designate responsibility for keeping current with national initiatives and what support they can provide to specific librarians with the authority and autonomy to act on their behalf. A current example is the ARL Discussion Paper on Scholarly communication and the need for collective action. (October 1997: http://www.arl.org/sparc/discuss.html) [EDITOR: provide link here, please] Sample action 2: This information should regularly be distributed to customers, preferably through annual, on-site, symposia. The latter should bring high-profile speakers on-site that will have credibility with customers (e.g. university faculty) and who do not shrink from the need for courageous action, such as re-engineering the tenure and promotion process at universities as it relates to scholarly publishing. Sample action 3: Provide funding from our organizations for national initiatives to develop a new economic model for the communication of scholarly information SUBVERSIVE ACTIONS (apologies to Steven Harnad) are also underway, but not at a rate and magnitude that will prevent commercial re-manufacturers of scholarly products from stopping the leaks in the dikes as they occur. The seminal point here is: how can we speed up this process? ITS A GOOD THING: More and more tools are becoming available that will allow scholars to produce manuscripts that are immediately Web-ready, needing no intermediary intervention, other than peer review. The latter is already happening, for the most part, voluntarily at universities and other research institutes. Sample action 1: Librarians should create a dynamic inventory of editors and editorial board members and reviewers working out of their organizations. Sample action 2: This group should be targeted for special education and current awareness. They should, for instance, know about alternatives such as HighWire Press (TM) [EDITOR: please make link here: http://highwire.stanford.edu/ ] and Project Muse [EDITOR: please make link here: http://muse.jhu.edu/muse.html/ ] and how to join these. Sample action 3: The best publishing practices, such as the cheap, rapid, and excellent electronic-ONLY journals published by the Association for Computing Machinery [EDITOR: Please make link here: http://www.acm.org/pubs/ ], should be supported and demonstrated to customers, especially the above group. Sample action 4: Library association journals should pioneer new practices in automated peer review and publication submission technologies, such as processes that will eliminate the need for HTML-editing by publishers. Sample action 5: Librarians, especially those working in a tenure-track environment, should place emerging national actions on the agenda of local professional and institutional committees (e.g. the Faculty senate committee) for discussion and actions in support thereof. A current example is the AAU's proposal for decoupling certification to streamline scholarly communication. Sample action 6: Librarians and their customers should actively try to get journalists to write about the crisis in the popular press. The article (Monday, December 29, 1997. C2) about Purdue University Library's courageous response to recent product offerings from profit making publishers, is a stellar example. At my own organization, we have been able to get articles in the science and technology section of the major newspaper twice in 1997. Sample action 7: State governments should be informed about the impact current and future legislation may have on their ability to purchase competitive information for their citizens, as well as how taxpayer's money is spent to create scholarly information, which is then given away to re-publishers at low or no cost, to be sold back to them at inflated prices. How do we know these prices are inflated, other than the annual price increases? Commercial publishers make profits or they would not have shareholders and be able to merge or take-over other companies at enormous cost, nor would they be able to post increased earnings every year. One such company INCREASED it profits by 28% in 1996. CONCLUSION A personal goal for 1998 crystallized for me at the Faxon Colloquium. I hope to mobilize colleagues in STM libraries in my region to form a consensus building group. Together we can build consensus on which electronic products, versions of products, services, types of subscriptions, and types of licenses best meet our needs and budgets. This would have the added benefit of making our decisions more credible with internal customers, while preventing any of us from making bad, precedent setting electronic purchases. This is not the language of boycott, rather that of informed consent; of taking up the battle cry for the continued march of science, while others would slow it or only make it available to those who can afford to pay inflated prices. [ It is imperative that librarians become demanding consumers in the digital age if we are to serve the best interests of our own customers.]