Monthly Archives: October 2009

Shortest-Lived Genre in Book History?

Posted on by

Selecting titles for off-site storage in a large library is sometimes a trip through the history of fads and passions. Years ago, I sent off a number of titles on atheism from the 1960s, thinking that subject probably wouldn’t be a craze again. Less than a decade later came Dawkins et al., so I’m definitely no seer.

However, I do have a proposal for the shortest-lived genre in book history: A Guide to [Whatever Subject] on the Internet. Ten or fifteen years ago this was a hot genre, and now the notion of using a book as a guide to websites just seems archaic.

Dealing with the Pusher Man

Posted on by

We’re discussing some of our journal packages from large publishers, so I’ve been thinking a lot about them lately. Those who work in or have paid much attention to collection development for the past couple of decades are aware of the impact serial price increases have had on library budgets. I think this has been one of the most pressing issue in academic libraries for a long time. In general, I believe libraries should pull out of most package deals with publishers and go back to managing subscriptions on a title by title basis, as well as have the willingness to cut those titles with exorbitant price raises. This provides libraries their only bargaining power with publishers.

I’ve heard a number of librarians over the years claim that Elsevier or Wiley or Springer or whomever were “evil,” and I can’t say I’ve always been more generous in my appraisals. It doesn’t help us to bemoan our fate or ask why the publishers act like they do. They do things for the same reason all corporations do anything: to maximize profit. Why this big increase? To maximize profit. Why that pricing model? To maximize profit. That’s all the “evil” publishers like Elsevier do, and they do it well. As long as they’re not being fraudulent (like publishing advertising as medical scholarship), they’re no more evil than any corporation. Publishers aren’t there to be information providers. Providing information is just the way they make money. I think scholarly information is a public good and should be kept out of commercial hands for the most part, but that’s certainly not going to happen. Blaming commercial publishers for maximizing profits is like blaming fish for swimming.

We’re never operating in an equal bargaining position, partly because journals aren’t commodities. Each journal is a monopoly. We can’t unsubscribe from Brain and choose Mind instead just to save $10,000. Publishers know how unlikely we are to sacrifice key titles. Many years ago they tried to maximize their profit by raising journal prices at four times the rate of inflation. When libraries finally cracked and started cutting subscriptions, they got us to give up all control and agree to multi-year packages where they would raise the prices each year by only twice the rate of inflation, and we agreed to ease our pain. Then they threw in a lot of stuff we neither want not need and pretended they were doing us a favor, while in reality they were just trying to get us hooked so we’d do anything they asked later just to keep getting our fix. Plus, now we’re charged for “access,” and don’t even own anything that we can preserve in some cases. They were performing as rational agents in the marketplace. The question is, can we?

It doesn’t do any good to try to bargain with publishers if we have nothing to bargain with. They’ve seen for 20 years how willing we are to make deals which benefit them more than they benefit us. The only way to have any bargaining power is to get out of the packages and resume control title by title. Someone might ask,  what if they go back their old ways and start raising journal prices exorbitantly? The only answer is that we have to cancel the journals they do this for, and with hindsight know that moving into multi-year packages won’t solve our problems, either. If we’re not willing to go back to title by title control, and we’re also not willing to cancel subscriptions even to high profile journals if they start raising prices exorbitantly, then we have NO bargaining power whatsoever, and probably never will. Unless we do this, there’s certainly no use in trying to fix the blame on the publishers; we’ll have only ourselves to blame.

There has probably never been a better time for libraries to start acting more aggressively in the marketplace. Librarians have been putting the case against commercial STM journal publishers for years, and the faculty don’t like it when publishers do this stuff any more than we do. But now libraries have an even better reason to act. Libraries and universities are under enormous financial strain, and this is the perfect time to try to regain our bargaining power. This is the time to stop paying for packages containing a lot of titles we don’t want, don’t need, and don’t use, and to take back what control we can. It’s no use damning the Pusher Man. The only way to deal with the Pusher Man is to push back.

The Victim of Library Instruction

Posted on by

Last time I wrote about librarian-instructor collaboration, and that got me thinking about why those collaborations don’t always work out. In this context, I’m thinking more about collaborations on first year writing classes, where there’s often a library instruction component offered.

Some instructors are resistant to having librarians in their classes, or giving any time to the librarians. Librarians sometimes don’t understand this. The attitude is, "but I could help so much. Why won’t they let me in?" The librarians really want to help the students, and most of them probably would. But I can also see this from the other side of the desk, or of the classroom, or whatever is between the librarian and the instructor. Some instructors are reluctant to let librarians in because they have been the victims of library instruction.

I speak from experience, because I myself was a victim of library instruction. I’m offering a cautionary tale. When I was a wee writing instructor at Big State U., it was part of the routine to take the class to the library for some instruction in preparation for the research essay. For a couple of semesters, I dutifully followed orders. Before that, I’d had almost no contact with any librarians either in college or grad school, and had always managed to find my way on my own. English and philosophy majors don’t do a lot of research in general, so I’m not saying it was any great feat to get through without help. But I did. However, I was glad at first to have the experts talk to the students.

The experts didn’t talk to the students. I think the people delivering the instruction were graduate assistants who were in library school at the time. This might or might not be relevant, because GAs differ so much in their backgrounds. And I know that many GAs there were fantastic, such as myself and all my friends when I was in library school there. But I got a clunker, two semesters in a row.

We showed up at the library, and went to the well appointed instruction room, consisting of 2-3 tables, 25 or so chairs, and an overhead projector. This was 1992, and the library had a telnet catalog and Infotrac and some other databases. But the students saw none of that in action. I’m not sure if they saw much of anything. The library instructor dimmed the lights, and began putting transparencies on the overhead projector explaining Boolean logic in great detail, showing what the catalog would look like if we were in fact searching it, etc. And all this in a monotone for 50 minutes. To lend the library person authority, I tried to stay awake, but it wasn’t always possible. Dozing off was the only way to escape the excruciatingly boring presentation we were all subjected to.

The students naturally complained. This is especially significant, since I myself at the time was a novice teacher and embarrassingly bad according to my own standards. I later grew a beard and began wearing big hats so that my students from that year wouldn’t recognize me later and throw rocks at me. I was bad, but the library person was much worse. After a couple of semesters I said "to hell with this" and taught the library portion myself. There was no way I would have let someone from the library into my classroom.

Obviously much has changed since then. More classrooms have computers in them and are set up for hands-on learning. More librarians actually get the students searching for and evaluating materials right there in the library session. There’s more active learning in general going on.

But how many librarians out there still do the equivalent of what I described? PowerPoint presentations to unengaged students? Monotonous lectures about Boolean logic to students updating their Facebook status? (Jane Smith "is lulled into a peaceful sleep by the librarian.") How many of us think library instruction consists of conveying information about using the library? Library instruction should convey information about using the library, but this is not the only, or possibly even the most important thing about it. It’s not about conveying information, but about engaging an audience. It’s not us teaching, but them learning that matters.  In short, how many of us are just plain boring and don’t make an effort to engage the students?

Also, despite how good you might be, and all your colleagues might be, how many instructors have been the victims of library instruction in the past? Some resistance has nothing to do with the way things are now. It might not be completely rational to dismiss library help because of a few bad sessions, but it’s not completely irrational from the instructor’s perspective, either. A few bad sessions are enough to turn a new instructor off the library for good, and bad experiences from the distant past still inform the thinking of instructors in the present.

Anyway, it’s something to think about.