Scholarly communication is evolving to meet the challenges and opportunities of the current technological era. Research universities expect academic libraries and presses to overcome cultural differences and collaborate to improve the production and dissemination of scholarship. This paper examines the separate worlds of libraries and presses and explores the common ground between the two where collaborations occur, particularly those related to monographic publications.Contents
Scholarly communication in a digital age
Traditional roles in scholarly communication
Transitioning to a digital environment
Selected library and press collaborations
Learning from collaboration
Conclusion
Scholarly communication in a digital age
Much has been written about the transformation of scholarly communication brought about by the Internet. Although scholars are central to the creation of research and innovation, their work is supported and facilitated by academic presses and libraries. The presence and quality of these two divisions within research universities often contribute to institutional prestige.
This article focuses on research libraries and publishers as two groups that are gaining more experience in the production and dissemination of monographic scholarship in digital formats. It surveys their entry into the digital sphere and examines where they are today. Their perspectives and priorities differ but each party has knowledge and experience that could benefit the other.
Collaborative efforts to transform scholarly communication require that librarians and publishers take the time to learn about the other’s world. My experience in libraries and publishing informs my writing: first as a professional librarian working with computer systems and, most recently, as the BiblioVault Manager developing a digital book repository for the University of Chicago Press.
Academic presses and libraries each serve communities of scholars, albeit in different ways. The needs and expectations of these scholars and students have changed dramatically as technology has gained greater prominence in research and teaching. The cycle of scholarly communication has accelerated as new ideas and research findings are shared with colleagues around the world in a matter of minutes.
The delivery of classroom instruction has been transformed as it increasingly utilizes automated tools and e–learning courseware such as Blackboard or WebCT. Professors are less likely to require the purchase of multiple textbooks than they are to assemble a coursepack of selected readings, a coursepack that may or may not adhere to copyright regulations. Students assume that the library will provide course reserves electronically so they will not have to enter the library to complete their assignments.
All of these changes have affected the relationships among faculty, students, administrators, university presses and libraries, making them dynamic and fluid. As libraries and publishers struggle to adapt to evolving expectations and conditions, they are challenged to explore new technologies, e.g. digitization. More importantly, they need to work collaboratively to support the creation and dissemination of scholarly information. Their different perspectives and cultures may make this the harder challenge. But, as collaborators at Pennsylvania State University found, "the fact that we now have a history of informed cooperation has been essential to overcoming our differences and fostering mutual respect" [ 1].
Traditional roles in scholarly communication
To understand the obstacles to collaboration, we need to examine how university presses and libraries operate and how they got to where they are today. In publishing houses, acquisitions editors, with extensive disciplinary knowledge and reputation, work closely with faculty to foster and guide the creation of new works that will contribute to scholarship. The work moves through a peer–review process and is then vetted by manuscript editors for accuracy and quality, before being passed on to design and production. University presses invest significant amounts of money to create printed books, money they hope to recover as first copy costs when the titles are first released. Libraries typically enter the scene as potential, and significant, customers when a book is promoted, often years after it was initially conceived.
Collection development librarians and bibliographers work with departmental faculty in order to assure that collections reflect institutional research and teaching priorities. These librarians often are closely tied to their disciplines and, just as their editorial counterparts, they may publish and present professionally.
Over the last few decades, reallocations of collection development budgets have altered the traditional relationship between library and publisher. Statistics from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) demonstrate that library expenditures for serials grew at an exponentially higher rate than for monographs from 1986 to 2002 [ 2]. The high costs of science, technical, and medical journals in particular, as well as fees for electronic databases, have altered traditional buying patterns. Humanities and social sciences scholarship, which relies more heavily on monographic publications, has suffered as a result.
Monograph sales to academic libraries represented eighty percent of the university press market at one time but in recent years that figure has dropped to under twenty percent.
A report by the Scholarly Communication Committee of the Association of College and Research Libraries states that "Faced with declining library markets and other economic pressures, university presses have substantially decreased the extent to which they produce specialized scholarly monographs" [ 3]. According to the director of the University of California Press, monograph sales to academic libraries represented eighty percent of the university press market at one time but in recent years that figure has dropped to under twenty percent [ 4]. This change has dire implications for junior faculty’s ability to publish and, in so doing, build a scholarly record to support their bid for promotion and tenure. The critical nature of this transformation, not to mention ever–present economic pressures, drives much of the dialogue regarding scholarly communication.
At the same time as library buying patterns have changed, the growth of the Internet and related technologies has compounded the negative repercussions for the university press market. The Internet has enabled independent used booksellers to reach previously untapped markets. In addition, Amazon and larger book vendors regularly advertise new and used copies of offerings alongside one another. The ease with which used books can be acquired has further driven down sales of already threatened university press titles.
The library also demonstrates a commitment to institutional and scholarly research agendas by preserving unique or valuable resources. In the mid–1980s, the Council on Library Resources (CLR) convened a study by a group of librarians, scholars, and university administrators to address concerns about protecting endangered scholarship. CLR published their report, "Brittle Books," in 1986, and that same year created the Commission on Preservation and Access to oversee a collaborative preservation microfilming program [ 5]. In 1988 the U.S. government acknowledged its concern about the disintegration of books in the nation’s libraries and archives by increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) Office of Preservation to US$12.5 million. The NEH instituted the Brittle Books program with the goal of preserving three million volumes over twenty years [ 6]. Although these initiatives focused on microfilming, they raised professional awareness of preservation concerns and later influenced digitization programs.
Developing in parallel to library preservation programs in the 1980s were wide–scale endeavors to integrate previously disparate library computer systems and the data they contained. Significant investments were made in terms of machinery, infrastructure, and trained personnel to support traditional library services through automation at both the local and service provider levels [ 7]. Many of these investments could be justified by the cost–savings anticipated in these heavily transaction–oriented environments.
By the 1990s systems that previously had focused on staff functions such as cataloging, acquisitions, or circulation began to evolve into more user–oriented products. The development of the World Wide Web and browser software coincided with the online delivery of citation and full–text databases to the public. More attention was given to investigating ways in which library and external resources could be made available to students and faculty. Course reserves began to be made available online as a new added service, provoking tremendous anxiety in the publishing community — a topic I address in more detail later. Library technologists who were now managing mature systems were looking for new arenas and innovations to explore. Digitization projects were a prime candidate, not only for the electronic content that could be produced but also because interesting new tools could be developed. Library administrators understood the common ground that existed between preservation and library computer systems and promoted collaborations between the two groups.
Most academic publishers have not adopted technology as widely as their library counterparts due to the nature of monographic literature and because of the financial constraints under which presses operate. Unlike libraries, which have a high number of transactions that consume limited amounts of time throughout the day, the largest university presses produce only a few hundred titles a year. Smaller ones may produce only a few dozen. The effort required to publish each quality scholarly monograph depends upon the work of highly trained and knowledgeable personnel, not a computer whose primary value is its ability to perform repetitive actions. The value embodied in the publication of new academic research cannot be underestimated. One monograph, distributed around the world, may have a profound impact on the daily lives of average citizens. The significance of presses’ contributions to scholarly communication has been the rationale for university subsidization of their operations.
Anecdotal evidence tells of university presses that, a few years ago, received printer definition files (PDF) of new printed publications from their typesetters only to discard them as worthless.
In recent years academic presses have operated under the extreme economic pressures mentioned earlier. Competition and consolidation in the commercial publishing world and among booksellers have contributed to the challenges confronting university presses. Willis Regier, director of the University of Illinois Press, writes of the decline in institutional commitment to subsidize scholarly publishing and the expectation that presses will support rarefied scholarly works with the production of trade books. Regier reveals his distress at the added expectations regarding electronic publishing:
"Influential donors like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as university libraries and administrators, pressured university presses to move rapidly toward electronic publishing, thereby sapping press budgets, straining press staffs, and demoralizing press directors, all of whom were told ad nauseam that their work was old–fashioned or obsolete." [ 8]
Presses have demonstrated a fairly conservative approach to technology in large part because of the nature of their product as well as because of fears of losing control of their intellectual assets and, ultimately, the associated revenue. Anecdotal evidence tells of university presses that, a few years ago, received printer definition files (PDF) of new printed publications from their typesetters only to discard them as worthless. That naïveté has disappeared, as presses have become more technologically savvy. Still, surprisingly at a time when the general public and certainly academic library users are comfortable searching electronic reference sources, the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style was released with much fanfare last year but only with a print version. A CD–ROM version is to be released in the fall of 2004 with an Internet accessible edition to be made available at an unspecified date (see http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.html).
This is not to say that publishers have not played important roles in working with technology and information standards. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) was an early adopter of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), developing an application for electronic manuscripts. The Library of Congress and the Council on Library and Information Resources were among additional organizations participating in this work [ 9]. The AAP more recently developed the system called Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) which was based on the Handle System. The goal is to create persistent identifiers that conform to the Uniform Resource Name. Typically though, it is commercial publishers, not university presses, that have been active with information standards.
Transitioning to a digital environment
Libraries began to experiment with the digitization of special collections in the mid–1990s. The rationale was that digitizing rare materials would protect their delicate physical condition from overuse and at the same time make it possible to disseminate them more widely. Substantial effort was made to develop policies and standards that would be adopted by a broad spectrum of cultural institutions. In 1995 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation gave a grant to support a collaborative project by the University of Michigan and Cornell University. The Making of America project digitized primary source materials from the antebellum period through reconstruction [ 10]. The work at Michigan became the foundation of its Digital Library Production Service, which later digitized materials for, among others, the American Council of Learned Societies’ History E–Book Project and BiblioVault of the University of Chicago Press.
Where the goal of distribution of materials often was secondary in library digitization initiatives, scholarly societies and journal publishers entered the electronic arena precisely because they wanted to disseminate new research more broadly and in a more timely fashion. Additionally, electronic publications can accommodate interactive data models or multimedia that would be impossible in a paper version. The global nature of the Internet made it an ideal vehicle for transporting journal articles to dispersed academic research communities. Typically these initiatives developed in an entrepreneurial manner that is not uncharacteristic in academe. In an effort to support faculty authors and to develop new markets academic presses undertook electronic publishing ventures, usually without additional resources from their parent institutions, as alluded to earlier by Regier.
Some disciplines and some academic presses adapted more quickly to technological innovations than others. The journals division of the same University of Chicago Press that publishes the Manual of Style was at the forefront of electronic publishing in its collaborative work with the American Astronomical Society. In 1992 it began producing the Astrophysical Journal using SGML and was later able to use the World Wide Web for dissemination; see http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/about.html. This journal represents roughly 40 percent of the peer–reviewed literature in astronomy and astrophysics [ 11]. Later it was Chicago’s distribution center that developed the idea of using short–run digital printing to achieve economies of scale for its distribution customers. With significant funding in 2001 from the Mellon Foundation this materialized into the Chicago Digital Distribution Center and the BiblioVault digital book repository, which currently serve nearly thirty university presses [12].
The National Academies Press (NAP) also entered the world of electronic publishing in 1995. The Press, which publishes reports of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, currently offers free access and searchability to all of its titles. The NAP currently has over 3,000 titles available free on its Web site at http://www.nap.edu/, and sells more than 900 of them for sale as PDFs [ 13].
Selected library and press collaborations
At the same time, university presses and academic libraries were beginning to experiment with digitization initiatives on a collaborative basis. Project MUSE is an exemplar for this type of collaboration. The Johns Hopkins University Press began Project MUSE in 1995, working with the University library, in order to provide electronic access to humanities and social sciences journals. Today it offers almost 250 electronic journals from forty scholarly publishers [ 14]. Project MUSE is available by subscription and unlike some commercial database vendors guarantees subscribers continued ownership of content. This enables libraries to archive and use older issues even after they cancel a subscription.
Columbia University’s library, press, and academic computing department initiated the joint development of CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online), a collection of gray literature relating to international affairs. Aside from the aggregation of content in this discipline, the purpose of CIAO was "to evaluate use, cost, and delivery issues for online books" [ 15]. Building on this work and emphasizing its commitment to electronic publishing, in 1999 the university created the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia, commonly known as EPIC [ 16]. Christy Norman, Research Director of EPIC, makes the research findings relating to evaluation of online resources available on the EPIC Web site [17].
In the last two years, the University of California Press and the California Digital Library (CDL) have partnered to create eScholarship Editions, offering XML (Extensible Markup Language) versions of 1,400 press titles. The eScholarship program was begun by CDL to facilitate "innovation and supports experimentation in the production and dissemination of scholarship" [ 18]. The program encompasses a range of scholarly content beyond traditional books and journals. It acts as an institutional repository for faculty research and scholarship. It includes the cutting–edge development of interactive maps done by the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative of UC Berkeley’s International and Area Studies Department [19].
Learning from collaboration
With a shared commitment to the book and with so many successful collaborations, why is it that there remains so much tension between libraries and presses? As a librarian with many years of experience who made a brief foray into the world of academic publishing as project manager of the University of Chicago Press’s BiblioVault, I have witnessed the antipathy on both sides in public and in private.
Perhaps the problem is that although both groups have many values in common they have traditionally represented the needs of different players in the scholarly communication process. University presses are advocates for authors as they move their work from concept to physical product. In order to satisfy authors it has been important for publishers to produce high quality books and to protect the intellectual property within. However much librarians may interact with faculty authors it is typically in the role of researcher rather than producer. The library’s focus therefore has been on service and access. When scholarly communication was limited by the physical state of the information, the two organizations could work in harmony. The conflict began when that content was digitized and acquired attributes that it had not previously had. Suddenly exact copies could be reproduced easily, distributed across computer networks, and theoretically, would never wear out.
With a shared commitment to the book and with so many successful collaborations, why is it that there remains so much tension between libraries and presses?
The criticality of digital rights was highlighted in 1997 when the National Academies established a Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and the Emerging Information Infrastructure. It considered digitization because of its impact on copyright law, not because it exacerbated tensions between libraries and publishers. Gladney synthesizes the study’s findings with special emphasis on the concern that the balance between public and commercial interests which has been achieved in United States intellectual property law is threatened by information’s growing value as an asset [ 20].
Peter Givler, Executive Director of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), accentuates the seriousness of this transition to digital content in University Press Publishing in the United States [ 21].
"Within the last fifteen years, the act of writing has shifted from creating a visible, tangible record of thoughts and ideas, like a hand–written or typewritten manuscript, to creating an invisible and intangible electronic file. As long as that file is used to produce a familiar printed record, like a book, this shift may seem like a distinction without a difference, but it is actually quite profound. We are just beginning to explore what it may mean." [ 22]
Scholarly content may exist in varied formats. New publications can exist in printed paper form but they are born digital and so have some enhanced capabilities. Older printed materials can be converted into digital form and so achieve greater functionality than if they remained in their original state. One may be better for searching and the other for printing, and so be favored by one organization or the other. Nevertheless, these formats should not distract us from focusing on our service mission. Libraries and presses exist to serve the academic enterprise and to facilitate scholarly research and communication. The two groups are inextricably bound together and it is in everyone’s interests if they can create strong and positive relationships in order to fulfill this mission more effectively.
Certainly the expectations and reading habits of researchers and the general public are changing, albeit not overnight. Two studies came up with different, although not necessarily contradictory, findings. The Outsell report by Leigh Watson Healy says that readers still prefer printed versions of articles and books over electronic ones [ 23]. In focus groups, surveys and interviews conducted by Columbia’s EPIC team, Christy Norman found that library patrons are using many more electronic resources than paper [ 24]. Researchers also like the convenience of being able to access articles at any time of the day and from any place. Regardless of whether print or electronic versions are dominant at the moment, we are clearly moving in the direction of electronic formats. At the same time, many users’ habits and preconceptions remain based on the printed word.
So what is it that librarians and publishers can learn from the other as they enter the domain of digital content? Librarians have much to learn from their publishing counterparts about the book as an artifact. Academic presses have tremendous in–house expertise in book design and production that can carry over into a digital environment and give people greater ease in reading, whether looking at a screen or page. The high standards they assign to final printed products would be beneficial for libraries to understand and adopt. The BiblioVault used a third party vendor to scan printed books, a vendor that had considerable experience in working with library collections. BiblioVault personnel found that book production staff at the press had much less tolerance for imperfections such as speckling and skewing than did librarians. The vendor was successfully able to modify its scanning workflow and tighten its standards to achieve such a high quality product that the original and reproduction were virtually indistinguishable. The achievement of higher quality standards for scanning may be significant when we consider end users’ preference for reading printed matter.
Publishers are extremely frustrated by librarians’ unwillingness to understand and abide by copyright. In fact, the language each group uses when speaking of rights management indicates the depth of this problem: publishers, copyright protections and librarians, copyright restrictions.
Publishers also add enormous value through the acquisitions and editorial process. Library collection development relates to part of the publisher’s acquisitions process in that they both weed out unworthy literature. This imprimatur is extremely valuable when researchers seek an indication of quality as they navigate the overwhelming quantity of publications available online. Still, nothing in the library, even the selection process, approximates the substantial contributions editors make to the creation of books. Editors always have worked with authors to help nurture and develop manuscripts and that process will continue, albeit differently, in an electronic age [ 25]. It now has the possibility of becoming more visible to those outside the writing and editing processes. Kate Wittenberg, the director of the Columbia University Press, writes of this transformation:
"The big change will be in our ability to present a scholar’s ideas at various stages of development: We will be able to help scholars write for and respond to their colleagues and students much more immediately than was possible before the Internet and other electronic tools became available. We can present the continuing process of thought that occurs in creating a scholarly product, and disseminate that work quickly and accessibly, at several points in the process, to an audience around the globe." [ 27]
Rights management is another area in which university presses have great expertise and interest. They appreciate the complex web of rights and permissions that is represented in a typical academic publication. Traditionally, due to a lack of appropriate automated solutions, rights management has been the domain of one or two individuals. Their rarified knowledge has been codified in a less than standard, often idiosyncratic, manner. With the commodification of information in society and the more assertive role of the music and film industries in protecting their assets, a number of digital rights management systems and information standards have been developed. Some university presses are beginning to use these systems. It is noteworthy that Columbia’s EPIC is investigating patterns of use of online books, a critical area if copyright is to reflect the needs of scholars, both as authors and researchers, and not just commercial interests.
Publishers are extremely frustrated by librarians’ unwillingness to understand and abide by copyright. In fact, the language each group uses when speaking of rights management indicates the depth of this problem: publishers, copyright protections and librarians, copyright restrictions. Clearly, to one the issue is protecting the rights of creator and publisher, to the other it is improving access for users. Librarians’ tendency to utilize electronic reserves in offering course material makes publishers livid. Librarians have been slow to understand how threatening it is for them to make electronic copies easily accessible, copies that will not wear out, disappear, or need to be replaced in the same way as standard paper copies. Given the sophistication of available technology it is fairly easy to track the number of uses and compensate publishers appropriately for additional copies after an agreed upon threshold. This is a solution that more libraries are beginning to discuss, if not implement.
Librarians that ignore the important role copyright plays in promoting innovation and compensating authors and publishers for their significant efforts undermine a necessary system that creates valuable, often unique, information. University presses see this attitude on the part of libraries as contributing to the collapse of many presses in the last few years. Just this spring Northeastern University Press and the University of Idaho Press announced their closings [ 27]. They also see libraries as directly related to the financial difficulties all university presses, even the most prestigious, are confronting. In the last few years even Oxford, Harvard, California, and MIT presses have suffered cutbacks of personnel and had to reduce the size of their lists [28].
Presses are not the only university divisions that are facing hard times under tough economic circumstances. Libraries, too, have experienced fiscal challenges that have forced them to downsize and restructure their organizations. They have achieved efficiencies, in part, by integrating automated processes that support internal and external functions. This was accompanied by rigorous analysis of workflow and processes [ 29]. University presses have been slower to adopt technology and systems analysis due to undercapitalization and a more conservative culture. Technology as implemented in many academic presses operates in a silo fashion with separate divisions maintaining incompatible systems. Although staff throughout the organization may utilize a single electronic mail system, data from editorial, marketing, and production programs often cannot be shared without a significant amount of manipulation.
An important result of working with technology is librarians’ expertise regarding information standards. Librarians have played significant roles in developing these standards ever since Henriette Avram created the USMARC format for the Library of Congress. They are actively involved with the National Information Standards Organization, the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force, and were early adopters of markup languages such as SGML, HTML, and XML. OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) has been instrumental in developing the Persistent Uniform Resource Locator (PURL) as an interim solution until a more robust Uniform Resource Name system is in place. OCLC also sponsors much of the work of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Librarians’ knowledge of metadata facilitates at a granular level control of, and access to, information.
Librarians have a sophisticated understanding of search engines and their underlying architecture that is invaluable in dealing with digitized content and making that content available to a broad audience. Information professionals have become concerned that students rely too heavily on Internet search engines that only retrieve superficial results while ignoring more powerful automated library databases. To address this issue they are beginning to work with Google [ 30], Yahoo, and other search engines to index their catalogs. This would be a start at tapping into the estimated 500 billion Web pages that are part of the deep Web, hidden from most searchers [ 31]. Libraries now recognize the advantages of indexing their catalogs in Google rather than assuming that all researchers will use library resources. By the same token presses might do well to move beyond their standard marketing catalogs. They could utilize reference linking capabilities in library catalogs to reach a broader market, presenting searchers with the chance to "buy this book" at the moment their interest is peaked.
Librarians also can bring their knowledge of researchers and computer users to collaborations with university presses. They interact with the public on a daily basis and are regularly challenged to support the research process. In an age of information overload, they are increasingly being asked to evaluate and referee resources. Often those asking for assistance may be in the library but sometimes they are not, using library resources remotely from their home or office. Regardless of where they are located, scholars and students can communicate their research needs to librarians, valuable knowledge for presses to have.
As mentioned earlier, librarians also have particular mastery of preservation. Although in the past their work has focused on the preservation of paper books it now also encompasses the special problems that relate to digital materials. Librarians are at the forefront of dealing with the issues of obsolescence of hardware and software and the implications for information access. Data can be fragile because of the manner in which it is stored or because of its vulnerability to being corrupted. Librarians and others working in cultural heritage institutions are working to archive and preserve information so that it will be accessible to future generations. University presses have published books and subsequently left the archiving to printers. When copies run out a new print run is ordered. Although book vaults may be maintained, presses do so much more casually than libraries would. Vault holdings rarely represent all of a press’s publications. With the move to digitization and the shorter print runs that it makes possible, university presses will be more likely to want to maintain digital repositories of their titles so they have more control of their assets. Collaboration with libraries may support presses in such efforts.
Conclusion
The Internet challenges participants in scholarly communication to re–examine current practices and assumptions and to make adjustments that are appropriate to the new environment. University presses and libraries have a history of shared values and strong relationships although in recent years this harmony has been strained by fiscal pressures and external factors within the broader institutions and society as a whole. Librarians like to view the library as the "heart" of the university just as Charles Eliot and William Rainey Harper did. Nevertheless, ARL statistics indicate a continuing decline in library expenditures as a percentage of total university expenditures [ 32]. In writing of the history of university presses, Givler articulates what may be the opinion of many academic publishers today, that presses are "an indispensable component of the modern research university" [ 33]. Yet, presses are being downsized and closed. Economic realities belie both romantic impressions.
During times of instability the tendency is to cling to the familiar. Fortunately, not all people and organizations operate in this fashion.
Rather than concentrating on their differences, libraries and presses would be better served by joining with the other to address common goals. The AAUP and ARL have designated 2004 as the "Year of the University Press" and want to emphasize "their complementary roles in the scholarly communications system and the need to work together in this time of economic and technological turbulence to ensure a strong system for the future" [ 34].
During times of instability the tendency is to cling to the familiar. Fortunately, not all people and organizations operate in this fashion. The AAUP Web site highlights more than a dozen collaborative projects being conducted at universities across North America [ 35]. Some are much more far–reaching than others are but they all represent a willingness to explore new territory. Some focus on a single discipline while others bring together new cross–disciplinary communities, Still others experiment with new business models.
Scholarly communication is being redefined and university presses and libraries have an opportunity to contribute to the discussions. Faculty and administrators are open to the knowledge and experience these two key players offer. Libraries and presses have greater potential to influence this transformation if they speak in unison, keeping the focus on their mission of service to the academic community.
About the author
Mary Alice Ball is an assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Library & Information Science in Indianapolis. She has worked in library systems at Loyola University Chicago, NOTIS Systems (Northwestern University) and at the University of Michigan. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in Higher Education Administration with a minor in Management Information Systems. After an all too fleeting experience in the dotcom world, she served as BiblioVault Manager at the University of Chicago Press, managing the development of a digital book repository.
E–mail: mball2 [at] iupui [dot] edu.
Notes
1. Nancy Eaton, Bonnie McEwan, and Peter J. Potter, 2004. "Learning to Work Together," at http://aaupnet.org/arlaaup/index.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
2. "Expenditure Trends in ARL Libraries, 1986–2002," at http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/graphs/2002/2002t4.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
3. "Principles and strategies for the reform of scholarly communication: Issues related to the formal system of scholarly communication," College & Research Libraries News, volume 64, number 8 (September 2003) pp. 526–527.
4. Lynne Withey, 2003. "Crises and opportunities: The futures of scholarly publishing," Remarks at the 2003 ACLS Annual Meeting, at http://www.acls.org/03am/withey.pdf, accessed 1 July 2004.
5. "About the Commission on Preservation and Access Newsletter," at http://www.clir.org/pubs/cpanews/#about.
6. Patricia M. Battin, National Humanities Alliance, "Written Statement on the FY–1996 Appropriation for the National Endowment for the Humanities" (31 March 1995), at http://www.nhalliance.org/testimony/1995/95testimony-pbattin.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
7. Robin Downes, 1989. "Resource sharing and new information technology — an idea whose time has come," Journal of Library Administration, volume 10, number 1, pp. 115–125; James Michalko, 1990. "Costly boundaries: Costs, new technologies, and bibliographic utilities," Technical Services Quarterly, volume 8, number 1, pp. 29–36.
8. Willis G. Regier, 2003. "5 Problems and 9 Solutions for University Presses," Chronicle of Higher Education, volume 49, issue 40 (13 June).
9. "A Brief History of the Development of SGML," 1990 SGML Users’ Group, at http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/sgmlhist.htm, accessed 1 July 2004.
10. "About MOA," at http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/about.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
11. Evan Owens, 1996. "SGML and The Astrophysical Journal: A Case Study in Scholarly and Scientific Publishing," at http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/sgml96.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
12. "BiblioVault," at http://www.bibliovault.org, accessed 1 July 2004.
13. "National Academies Press," at http://www.nap.edu/, accessed 1 July 2004.
14. "Project Muse General Overview," at http://muse.jhu.edu/proj_descrip/gen_intro.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
15. Francine Fialkoff, 1998. "Columbia University Press: Trading on tradition," Library Journal, volume 123, issue 14 (1 September), pp. 141–143.
16. Florence Olsen, 1999. "Columbia U. Press Sets Up a New–Media Unit Devoted to Scholarly Publishing," Chronicle of Higher Education, volume 45, issue 49 (13 August), p. A29.
17. "EPIC: Online Use and Cost Evaluation Program," at http://www.epic.columbia.edu/eval/evalframe.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
18. "CDL: eScholarship," at http://www.cdlib.org/programs/escholarship.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
19. Michael Buckland and Lewis Lancaster, 2004. "Combining Place, Time, and Topic: The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative," D–Lib Magazine, volume 10, number 5 (May), at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may04/buckland/05buckland.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
20. Henry M. Gladney, 1999. "Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property: Synopsis and Views on the Study by the National Academies’ Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and the Emerging Information Infrastructure," D–Lib Magazine, volume 5, number 12 (December), at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12gladney.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
21. Peter Givler, 2001. "University Press Publishing in the United States", In: Richard E. Abel, Lyman W. Newlin and Katina Strauch (editors). Scholarly Publishing: Books, Journals, Publishers and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. New York: Wiley, and at http://aaupnet.org/resources/upusa.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
23. Daniel Greenstein and Leigh Watson Healy, 2002. "Print and Electronic Information: Shedding New Light on Campus Use," EDUCAUSE Review (September/October), at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm02511.pdf, accessed 1 July 2004.
24. "EPIC: Online Use and Cost Evaluation Program," at http://www.epic.columbia.edu/eval/eval04frame.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
25. Lynne Withey, 2003. "Crises and Opportunities: The Futures of Scholarly Publishing," Remarks at the 2003 ACLS Annual Meeting, at http://www.acls.org/03am/withey.pdf, accessed 1 July 2004.
26. Kate Wittenberg, 1998. "Cutting Edge Scholarship and Electronic Publishing," Chronicle of Higher Education, volume 44, issue 41 (19 June), p. B6.
27. Marilyn Gardner, 2004. "Sad chapter for university presses," Christian Science Monitor, volume 96, issue 88 (1 April), p. 11.
28. "Oxford University Press cuts 35 jobs as part of staff restructuring," BP Report (23 February 2004), volume 29, issue 6.
29. Jan Hayes and Maureen Sullivan, 2003. "Mapping the Process: Engaging Staff in Work Redesign," Library Administration and Management, volume 17, number 2 (Spring), pp. 87–93.
30. Jeffrey R. Young, 2004. "Google Tests Search Engine for Colleges’ Scholarly Materials," Chronicle of Higher Education, volume 50, issue 33 (23 April), p. A36.
31. Katie Hafner, 2004. "Old Search Engine, the Library, Tries to Fit Into a Google World," New York Times (21 June), p. 1 at http://www.nytimes.com, accessed 21 June 2004.
32. "Library Expenditures as a Percent of University Expenditures for 40 ARL Libraries, 1982–2001," at http://www.arl.org/stats/eg/graph40.html.
33. Peter Givler, 2001. "University Press Publishing in the United States", In: Richard E. Abel, Lyman W. Newlin and Katina Strauch (editors). Scholarly Publishing: Books, Journals, Publishers and Libraries in the Twentieth Century. New York: Wiley, and at http://aaupnet.org/resources/upusa.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
34. "What is "The Year of the University Press"? And Why?" at http://www.aaupnet.org/arlaaup/about/index.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
35. "Library & Press Collaborative Projects," at http://www.aaupnet.org/arlaaup/projects/list.html, accessed 1 July 2004.
Editorial history
Paper received 7 July 2004; accepted 26 October 2004.
HTML markup: Diana Duncan and Edward J. Valauskas; Editor: Edward J. Valauskas.
Copyright ©2004, First Monday
Copyright ©2004, Mary Alice Ball
Libraries and university presses can collaborate to improve scholarly communication or "Why can’t we all just get along?"
by Mary Alice Ball
First Monday, volume 9, number 12 (December 2004),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_12/ball/index.html
