BEWARE OF GEEKS BEARING GIFTS

Things are tough all over, unless you are a Wall Street robber who just picked the public pocket yet again.* Stagflation is once again the name of the game in academe as budgets get cut while inflation continues at near double-digit pace. The inevitable effect of libraries canceling subscriptions and relying more on Interlibrary Loan and free Internet resources is even greater inflation in serial prices. As noted in this column on Jan. 2, 2002, one way that the scholarly community has attempted to mitigate the spiraling costs of scientific journals is free open access via the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (http://www.arl.org/sparc/). For their extensive and growing Directory of Open Access Journals containing more than 200,000 articles please see http://www.doaj.org/. For an excellent article on the relationship between serial costs and open access see Library Journal’s “Periodical Price Increase” article from 2007 at http://www.library journal.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6431958.

Another way libraries can afford extensive journal access, this time to backfiles, is through the very popular JSTOR program. Just go to http://www.jstor.org/action/showAdvancedSearch?cookieSet=1. Typically there is a “moving wall,” meaning that articles published in the most recent three years are only available through existing subscriptions or Interlibrary Loan. Ninety-five percent of a loaf is far better than one.

So we should be thrilled that the American Anthropological Association has trumpeted a “groundbreaking move” of open access to a whopping 86 years of articles, right? Before you pop that champagne and accidentally spill it on your Levi Strausses take a look at the Chronicle of Higher Education article that reveals that AAA’s “moving wall” is 35 years! (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/07/anthro) While research methods and findings in anthropology may not be changing as mercurially as say nanotechnology or astrophysics, 35-year-old social science research isn’t half a loaf, it’s stale crumbs. Hence libraries and individual scholars still pay for current material, and how much do you want to bet that subscription costs will increase even further to pay for the cost of mounting the backfiles?

Beware of geeks bearing gifts.

—Jim Dwyer, Meriam Library, Bibliographic Services

*Opinions expressed in this column are the author’s only and not necessarily those of CSU, Chico or the Meriam Library, but $110 billion in pork atop a $700 billion bailout? In the immortal words of Charlie Brown, “Good grief.”