I’m working on a review of Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects. This is not that review; this is just a sidenote that working on the review touched off.
Where was the essay in this book on what open access will do to and for libraries? The book mentions libraries with some frequency. Several of its essayists are librarians. Yet “libraries” is not even an index term (though “library budgets” is). “Publishing” is an index term. “Researchers” is an index term (and so is “research”). Not libraries. Nor librarians.
I hope I’m not the only person to find that disturbing. We’re not a key strategic, technical, or economic aspect of open access?
Much is made of how librarians impede open access. I’ll surprise you: I agree with that assessment. I don’t agree with the usual complaints, however. It’s got nothing to do with metadata (though I agree that we over-obsess about it sometimes, and the evidence shows it isn’t where we need to put the bulk of our effort). It’s got nothing to do with preservation, which is an absolutely valid and necessary concern. It’s got nothing to do with peer-reviewed research versus everything else we can and do archive.
It’s ignorance. Just as with researchers, the biggest problem I see in libraries is that outside of some enlightened leaders and a scattering of peasants like me, librarians know next to nothing about open access. Worse, my sense (admittedly based on anecdotal evidence only) is that the ingrained librarian distrust of free-as-in-beer is actively hindering library use and promotion of open-access materials.
Serials Solutions offers an open-access module in its popular e-journal management software. Dozens of OA journals and other sources, added to library collections in a few keystrokes. It’s a very enlightened approach. I wonder how many libraries that subscribe to Serials Solutions turn up their noses at it?
I wonder how many repository-rats have to struggle to build a coalition around a repository inside their own library. Insofar as I have managed it, it’s been by force of personality rather than my colleagues’ intellectual investment in the concept. Several of my colleagues still stumble over their own tongues when they introduce me to faculty (which they are exceedingly good about) and try to describe what I do.
I wonder how many hear “But why would they just give that all away?” in tones of abject disbelief. (True story. I heard this with my own ears, from an honest-to-goodness librarian.) I wonder how many librarians at smaller, non-research-intensive institutions don’t think open access concerns them. I wonder how many are turned off by virulent anti-librarian sentiment in the open-access community—I’ve gotten fighting mad about that myself once or twice.
Much as I dislike survey research, I see a use for it here. We need to know how bad the ignorance problem is. We need to know if librarians are suppressing open-access materials, and if so, why. We need to know if they’re buying into publisher fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Part of the problem appears to be a certain reticence on the part of repository-rats (as opposed to leaders and policy-makers) to be open and direct with their colleagues. “I’m surprised you aren’t in more demand,” one of the folks engaging my speaking services said to me. “You’re almost the only one talking about what it’s like on the ground.”
This sounded odd to me, until I thought about it. I do see a few articles from folks on the ground. They’re highly guarded in tone, and they’re guarded because running a repository is really rather a bleak job at present. Repository rats aren’t losing faith, exactly—but I think it fair to say it’s easy for us to lose confidence.
I have my own agitprop plans locally; they’re actually looking rather promising at present. The dreaded book chapter I wrote this summer also addresses one thing that I myself think open access is going to do to libraries. If we’ve got a systemic perception problem, though—and I very much think we do—local agitprop will be of limited use, and what good is one little book chapter? We’ll need to get professional library associations further into the game than they are.
Anyway, all of this will probably boil down to a sentence or two in the actual review. I just didn’t want to forget it.
