In "A Conversation with Kristin Antelman," Brett Bonfield has interviews Kristin Antelman, Associate Director for the Digital Library at the North Carolina State University Libraries about the Taiga Forum (a group for Assistant/Associate University Librarians and Assistant/Associate Directors), its controversial 2009 Provocative Statements, and other topics.
Here's an excerpt:
[Bonfield] Is there anything we could do to that would keep us from being at the mercy of Google and the major publishers? . . . .
[Antelman] Scholarly publishers, operating in an increasingly consolidated market, will continue to raise prices beyond inflation and restrict libraries through complex big deal licenses. They do have us at their mercy. Open access may be the eventual solution (and I think it is) but, in the interim, the detrimental impacts of their dominance (smaller market for monographs, for instance) will continue to be significant. One thing libraries can do—and many have done—is never again enter into big deals, where flexibility is traded for cost savings. Another thing libraries can do is to be less fixated on collecting for posterity. Scholarly work is increasingly preserved beyond our walls: a significant percentage of the best articles are already openly available on the web (and this segment is growing), while another significant percentage is made openly available by publishers after an embargo period. Libraries, collectively, will have to be less dogmatic about licensing (and replicating) complete and official versions of the STM (scientific/technical/medical) literature. At risk are two dimensions of our mission that have historically (and justifiably) defined us as research libraries: developing collections of significant breadth to meet the needs of all our constituents and maintaining the capacity to invest in new services.
