Methodology, Literature Review and Discussion (Week 2)

The methodology will be to start by researching relevant journal articles, books, and websites. These resources will mostly come from the course syllabus. I will also use resources which include audio/video resources, and blogs. Some of the answers and ideas will come from academic library staff. My notes will be entered using Google Docs and organized into edited content to be posted to the blog. The output will include a discussion of relevant data, quotes, and ideas. As stated earlier, all the content described will be posted weekly between June 16, 2009 to the end of July, 2009.

Now I would like to turn to an important debate about the development of open access resources. The controversy exists around a situation wherein tax dollars fund research at a university. The tax-funded research is then published by scholarly journals which charge publicly-funded libraries for access.

In this way taxpayers are charged for it twice (Russell, 2004, p.8). Of course this is an oversimplification. However, like many issues in this field, it brings up useful questions such as: What exactly happens to the research destined for open access? Do the researchers hand over a copy of the work for free to the publisher to edit? How much does it actually cost for the content to be published, maintained, and made accessible in various formats and venues? How much public funding actually goes to library
e-resource support? How much public funding actually went into the research?

In the book “Selecting and Managing Electronic Resources” by Vicki Gregory, a significant point is made that any free e-resources need to be investigated as to the reliability, accuracy and authoritativeness of the content, before being added to the collection. One can argue that these aspects are more consistently found in licensed resources where private financial investment is at stake.

Sometimes the impetus for providing open access content is fulfilled via institutional repositories. The use of these repositories has been recommended as a way to gather and "include digital multimedia, gray literature, learning objects, website capture, digitized special-collections materials, and perhaps even records management..." (Salo, 2008, p.23).

In the face of inhibiting situations such as when an author "will not sign licenses or handle deposits themselves" (Salo, 2008, p.23), Salo recommends that "Institutional repositories should seek forgiveness rather than permission from faculty" (Salo, 2008, p.23). The idea seems to be for library staff to provide and manage all the online access for licensed resources, as well as to collect and associate free content, including providing access to content that some people don't even want us collecting. When Salo suggests collecting materials from those who "will not sign licenses or handle deposits themselves" (Salo, 2008, p.23), it seems as though it would create another licensing nightmare down the road, similar to cases the Google Book Project is working through.

In my opinion, if you don't have the staffing to do it right in the first place then prioritize the management of existing paid licensed resources. Developing funding and institutional support will require the establishment of realistic cost expectations for creating and managing an institutional repository. Unfortunately, the newness of this field makes it especially difficult to measure how much it will cost to support open access resources. The volume of available free content is growing exponentially. Applications are continually developing to fill the needs. For example, accurate automated processes such as bringing catalog records into a cross-linking service are being aided by the development of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). The volume of free content changes unpredictably.

Salo makes the point that there is a need for organizing the mass of content coming from university staff. The proactive and multi-directional publishing activities of academic staff, as Salo points out, are a problem for archiving and accessing content produced in the university setting. The work of gathering that strength into an organized process is a multi-departmental project that will likely involve mandating protocols for all authoring staff.

The E-Resources Management Handbook provides a broad overview of all the types of e-resources (databases, ejournals, ebooks, wiki/blog, websites) and discusses the great value of open access resources. In my opinion, the chapter "A general overview of the e-resource industry” is written with an open access bias, possibly exaggerating its progress and potential to help libraries by saving money. For example instead of mentioning the problems and real costs of integrating, supporting and managing these resources, it simply reports that the vice-chancellors will likely not look favorably at the costs, as though it is only the perspectives of the Vice-Chancellors that are the problem.

The chapter points out a valuable history note. The self- or open-archiving initiative, The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), was developed by Stevan Harnad in the mid 1990s in response to an ongoing crisis in serials pricing which curtailed the number of journals that educational institutions could afford, thereby effectively robbing research of much scholarly communication.

Open access content uses a variety of funding models including: charging authors publication fees, receiving institutional subsidies via trusts, grants (Terry, 2005), membership fees or marketing schemes which may include pay-per-click ads on their website.

References:
Armstrong, Chris & Lonsdale, Ray. (2006). “A general overview of the e-resource industry.” The E-Resources Management Handbook. UKSG Publishing. http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.1629/9552448-0-3.1.1

Gregory, V. L. (2006). Selecting and managing electronic resources. Neal-Schuman Publishers, N.Y.

Russell, C. (2004). Complete Copyright: An Everyday Guide for Librarians. American Library Association.

Salo, D. (2008). “Innkeeper at the Roach Motel.” Library Trends, 57(2). (preprint: http://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/22088)

Terry, R. (2005). “Funding the Way to Open Access.” PLoS Biol 3(3): e97. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030097