Another Perspective on the Google Deal

David Carr’s New York Times article offers a reconsideration of the Google Deal.

With long-standing print publications like the Christian Science Monitor announcing they will cease print operations, and other major publishing companies like Time Inc. cutting payroll, Carr asserts that

“the sky is falling. The question now is how many people will be left to cover it.”

Because readers are accustomed to accessing electronic news content for free, whether directly through the established news publication channels or through the vast network of hyperlinks that is the blogosphere, the transition from paid print subscriptions to paid online subscriptions will be a difficult and heavily contested one.  Furthermore, online ads do not drive the same revenues as print ads, and advertisement funds have experienced a dramatic contraction as the three major reliable advertising sectors,

“car industry, retail business and financial services”,

are reaping the rotten fruits of their risky financial labors.

But the crucial question that Carr poses is,

What will happen to the content and quality of online journalism and commentary if the vetted print publications, and their electronic versions, were to disappear?

Google to Offer Institutional Subscriptions to ‘Millions of Books Online’

In its settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP), Google agreed to terms for

“Institutional Subscriptions to Millions of Books Online — Offering a means for U.S. colleges, universities and other organizations to obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the world’s most renowned libraries”.

While acknowledging and protecting the rights of copyright holders, this agreement significantly expands Google’s digitization and electronic distribution projects in a way that is hailed as a ‘win-win’ scenario for authors, publishers, and readers alike.

In addition to offering institutional subscriptions for institutions of higher education and other organizations, U.S. public libraries will have free access for viewing out-of-print books from designated on-site computers.

Furthermore, the $125 million that Google agreed to pay in the settlement will be used to create the Books Rights Registry.  The Registry will enable U.S. copyright holders from all over the globe to register their works in order to

“receive compensation from institutional subscriptions, book sales, ad revenues and other possible revenue models, as well as a cash payment if their works have already been digitized”.

Read more about the agreement, which still needs approval from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, at PRNewswire and Wired.

The Great Cancellation Begins

Today we’ve started work on The Great Cancellation, scheduled for the 2009-2010 renewal period.

What I know is that our Collections Heads have expressed the desire to cancel any print subscriptions that we can replace with electronic equivalents, and maintain only those print subscriptions that are truly unique and not yet digitized.

What the little birdies tell me is that the powers that be would like to empty the Periodical Room and convert it into a gallery space.

Regardless, we started today by data massaging the content of a report provided by our vendor which details our current subscription formats and whether these titles are available as online-only subscriptions.  The final report will be subject to cost-benefit analysis and will determine which titles we move to online only subscriptions, and which, if any, we maintain in print.

Has your library moved towards electronic only serials holdings, or have there been discussions of this transition?  Will the decision be made purely on a cost-basis, or will you consider other factors in the decision-making process?

Treasures in the Stacks

A student worker recently brought me boxes of unbound issues of New Society: The Social Science Weekly (0028-6729) from the early 1960s.  This London publication is a treasure trove of juicy explorations, including

“What makes a horse sell whisky?”

“The teenager and the ‘black’”

“Sociology in Eggheadsville”

“Slum dwellers of Leeds”

and

“Desegregation and the frustrated white rats”

I’m reviewing these and other pieces to see if we should bind them, as other complete volumes of this title were bound and placed in the stacks.  It’s always a joy to spend time with such treasures.

Do you have a policy about binding older pieces in your library’s serials collection?

Checking Up on Checking In

An interesting thread developed on the SERILST listserv about eliminating periodicals check-in.

In his article ‘A sacred cow bites the dust’ (Library Journal 1 May 2002: 56), Rick Anderson, Director of Resource Acquisition of University Libraries at the University of Nevada – Reno, advocates for the “abolition of check-in” and for applying the time made newly available to the management of electronic resources.

Anderson provocatively asks,

“Is check-in really that important? For one thing, checkin allows us to tell users whether an issue has arrived, not whether it is in the stacks. It’s true that check-in allows us to monitor changes. But if a journal goes from monthly to quarterly and we don’t catch that, will it inhibit patron access? And given the extremely low usage levels of our bound journals, routine binding is nothing more than expensive and labor-intensive.”

In place of traditional periodicals check-in, the University Libraries of U. of Nevada have implemented a self-described ‘quick and relatively sloppy process’ of comparing received pieces to a list of subscriptions.  Subscription pieces are shelved in Current Periodicals; other pieces are reserved for inspection by subject specialists.

Ultimately, it appears that patron use is what motivated Anderson to reallocate staff resources and time to the management of electronic resources and away from the management of print subscriptions.

Responses on the listserv range from ‘we stopped checking in print pieces for which we have online access’ to

‘we are a state funded institution and are subject to audits, so we need to check in any pieces that we’ve paid for’ to

‘we continue to check-in subscribed pieces so that we know we’ve received what we paid for and we know what pieces we need to claim, and because our public librarians prefer that we continue to check pieces in’.

I subscribe to the latter view (pun intended) because I have the luxury of dividing responsibilities for managing electronic resources with another full-time colleague.  But with massive print subscription cancellations in my library’s future, I’m sure I’ll be reallocating my time towards electronic materials as well.

How do you manage your library’s print subscriptions?  What is your philosophy about maintaining print holdings in the OPAC?

Holdings Statements – Where a Little White Lie Never Hurt Anyone

In an effort to keep myself busy during the lull that follows subscription renewals, I’ve been working on a multi-faceted project to clean-up our local and UL holdings statements.

One thing I noticed about how my predecessor handled closing out holdings statements was that she always waited to close out a statement until that statement could be ‘true’.  For instance, in the case of a journal title we bind, she would wait until the last received volume had returned from the bindery and was assigned an item record before closing out the holdings statement for that title.

The problem with this approach is that it relied heavily on the attention to detail of our student workers, as they were the ones responsible for collecting and preparing volumes for binding and then processing volumes returned from the bindery.  They would have to notice that a volume was the last we’d receive for a title, make a note of this, and see or remember the note when the piece returned from the bindery, and then communicate this information to the full time staff member responsible for updating our holdings in the ILS and UL.

In the past year that I’ve worked in this library, I’ve discovered that the majority of our local holdings statements that should have been closed were in fact left open, and that an even greater number of union listings in OCLC were never closed.  This leads to problems with both our local and ILL patrons who assume, based on an open holdings statement, that we receive or retain all current issues of a journal, when, in fact, we don’t.

I’ve since changed the protocol for closing holdings statements in what may appear to be a dramatic way: I close holdings statements as soon as I know a title has changed, ceased, or our subscription has been canceled.  Yes, these preemptively closed holdings statements are just as wrong for the duration of our active subscription as the holdings statements that were left open, since they state that we’ve received pieces that we haven’t.  However, in the long run I’ve found that far fewer holdings statements slip through the cracks when they’ve been closed preemptively.

For the next few weeks I’ll be hunting down and closing out the holdings statements that my predecessor missed.  In this case, I think it’s better to tell a white lie – that is, to close out a holdings statement while our subscription is still ‘open’ – than to be leading patrons on long into the future.

How do you manage print subscrition cancellations and title changes/cessations with regards to holdings statements?