toc 6 College & Research Libraries January 1997 Guest Editorial 6 Let’s Straighten Out the Misconceptions about Electronic Information Like many of you, I am called upon from time to time to find resources for my children’s “research” projects. The most recent project, for my twelve–year-old, was a paper about Poland, which called for specific bits of information—monthly temperature, currency, and other fac- tual material. Jumping onto the Web, I found loads of information about Po- land. I found out how to conduct com- merce, where the good vacation sites are, and even this week’s weather in Warsaw. I did not find, however, the in- formation need-ed for the research pa- per. But it was easily located in the area handbook for Poland and the Statesman’s Year-Book. The World Wide Web reminds me of a swamp into which the unwary can al- most instantly sink and get lost. There are no standards or quality control. There is no editorial intervention, no permanence, no guidance. Yes, there is a lot of “stuff” available, much of it in- teresting, but by and large it is there for self-serving purposes, not to provide factual, objective information. The best information, the really useful informa- tion, will continue to be gathered, cre- ated, and disseminated profession- ally—processes which will continue to cost money, both for nonprofit organi- zations and for commercial publishers. Have you noticed that most of the relatively small amount of full-text, reliable material on the Web costs money, even though it is often of only marginal quality and use- fulness? A senior member of the Florida leg- islature recently informed me that my State University Library no longer needed any materials budget whatsover, because Harvard has digi- tized its entire collection, and is making it available free of charge on the World Wide Web. If only that were true! I would love to see Harvard spend bil- lions of dollars to negotiate with the holders of copyrights, do the labor in- volved in digitizing, and afford the band- width necessary to open its holdings up to the whole universe without charge. Common sense, of course, tells me that this will never happen. The reality is that foundations are spending millions to ex- periment with modest digitizing projects involving materials which are unique or out of copyright. Libraries, similarly, are digitizing specialty items, reserve col- lections, and other noncopyrighted ma- terials that are not easily available in other formats. Such projects make availability much easier, but do not amount to the creation of electronic li- braries. And publishers who are making “real” information available electroni- cally are charging handsomely for it. Electronic Books What about electronic books? Doesn’t Project Gutenberg place hundreds of texts out there free of charge? Yes, if you want to read a totally unauthorized I would love to see Harvard spend billions of dollars . . . to open its holdings to the whole universe without charge. Common sense, of course, tells me that this will never happen. Guest Editorial 7 text dependent on the volunteer typing of well-meaning amateurs working from nonauthoritative originals. As a gradu- ate student in English, I worked on sev- eral volumes of the Center for Editions of American Authors’ edition of Emer- son’s Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, a project which called, among other things, for five separate proofread- ings—two of them backwards, word by word and punctuation mark by punctua- tion mark—so that we would not be mis- led by the sense to gloss over the dif- ferences between the photocopy we were working from and the typescript. Any questions that arose and could not be easily settled using the photocopies were referred to the Houghton Library at Harvard where a librarian would have to look at the originals in the vault. Note that we worked from a copy of the origi- nal, not from a corrupted printed vol- ume. Are these the kinds of authorita- tive texts which untrained volunteers type up late at night after a full day’s work elsewhere? I think not. And when authoritative texts are eventually made available electronically, will they be of- fered free of charge? Not likely. In my library just now, I picked up The Poet’s Odyssey: Joachim Du Bellay and the Antiquitez de Rome, by George Hugo Tucker (Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1990) which was lying on a photocopy ma- chine. Someone had obviously used this volume within the last 24 hours, but it cannot be digitized (legally) by any li- brary or volunteer group, and I doubt that Oxford will ever find it commer- cially viable to make this book available electronically. Indeed, most of the books we own will never be digitized, and even those modern volumes which were typeset electronically will not be commercially viable as electronic prod- ucts in the foreseeable future. Yet we need to acquire them and make them available, or scholarship will, essentially, come to a halt. Electronic Journals What about electronic journals? A friend who recently became director of a ma- jor university library told me that as he arrived he discovered that the library had been put into the hands of the com- puter people for safekeeping, and they were within one week of cancelling ev- ery title to which the university sub- scribed on the grounds that it is all avail- able electronically, so the money could better be spent on equipment and elec- tronic access. But is it really all avail- able electronically? Latest ARL informa- tion indicates that of the 100,000 most common journals, only 3,000 are avail- able electronically, in any way. And, of course, those 3,000 would not be avail- able cover to cover, in many cases, or would offer limited access in some other way. Can you imagine the chaos that would have ensued at this major re- search university had they actually can- celled all of their journals? Faculty would have gone ballistic. Actually, I wish that this had happened, because it would have made front-page news in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and been a much-needed dose of reality for many. Increased Costs Will all, or at least most, useful infor- mation become available electronically some day? Of course it will. Keep in mind, however, that such availability will most likely add to our costs, not de- crease them. All available information indicates that electronic access will in- crease costs. Publishing is a business, and will remain one as we move into the electronic age. Even nonprofit or- ganizations depend on “excess rev- enue” from publications to fund money- losing association activities, in addition to covering publications and paying their staff. It cannot be otherwise. As individuals and as an association, we need to make these realities clear to the general public, to academic ad- ministrators, and to legislators. When 8 College & Research Libraries January 1997 you hear nonsense spouted about ev- erything being available on the Web, so that libraries are no longer neces- sary, speak up. Even when all informa- tion is available electronically, libraries will still be as necessary as they are now, and perform the same functions and more. Set people straight. Your profes- sional future, and the future of librari- anship, are in jeopardy if you allow such misconceptions to flourish. The recent Packard Bell ad depicting libraries in a negative light while promoting home computers as the answer is a perfect case in point. (The ad can be viewed online at http://www.packardbell /ads96/television.html.) ALA responded to this ad in several letters, but Packard Bell is still running it in prime time. Remember that information, whether in print or in electronic form, will cost money, and libraries are the medium and the catalyst for the trans- fer of this information to the general public. The legal and business commu- nities in my area save millions of dol- lars every year because my library makes its expensive resources avail- able to them without charge. We also support the millions of dollars of spon- sored research conducted at my insti- tution, which in turn results in new medi- cines, inventions, technology transfer, and economic development. It is essen- tial to the economy, and to the mainte- nance of the intellectual health of this country, that our role be properly un- derstood and valued. Recently, a student asked me for help with a paper on Da Vinci’s “Last Sup- per.” He is very computer-literate, and pulled out some printouts from the Web. “There is a lot of interesting material on the Web, but I doubt that you could do your paper based on what you find there,” I told him. “Yes, I have already discovered that,” he said. We need to discover it too, and to be sure that our key constituent groups discover it also, before they do any irreparable damage to our ability to provide them with the information they need. WILLIAM MILLER Florida Atlantic University President, ACRL All available information indicates that electronic access will increase costs. Publishing is a business, and will remain one as we move into the electronic age. << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 1 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo true /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts false /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 151 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 151 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 600 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.16667 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU (IPC Print Services, Inc. Please use these settings with InDesign CS4 \(6.x\). These settings should work well for every type of job; B/W, Color or Spot Color. Contact Pre-press Helpdesk at prepress_helpdesk@ipcprintservices.com if you have questions or need customized settings.) >> /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ << /AsReaderSpreads false /CropImagesToFrames true /ErrorControl /WarnAndContinue /FlattenerIgnoreSpreadOverrides false /IncludeGuidesGrids false /IncludeNonPrinting false /IncludeSlug false /Namespace [ (Adobe) (InDesign) (4.0) ] /OmitPlacedBitmaps false /OmitPlacedEPS false /OmitPlacedPDF false /SimulateOverprint /Legacy >> << /AddBleedMarks true /AddColorBars false /AddCropMarks true /AddPageInfo true /AddRegMarks false /BleedOffset [ 9 9 9 9 ] /ConvertColors /ConvertToCMYK /DestinationProfileName (U.S. Web Coated \(SWOP\) v2) /DestinationProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /Downsample16BitImages true /FlattenerPreset << /ClipComplexRegions true /ConvertStrokesToOutlines true /ConvertTextToOutlines true /GradientResolution 300 /LineArtTextResolution 1200 /PresetName ([High Resolution]) /PresetSelector /HighResolution /RasterVectorBalance 1 >> /FormElements false /GenerateStructure false /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles true /MarksOffset 9 /MarksWeight 0.250000 /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (3.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /NA /PageMarksFile /RomanDefault /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged /UntaggedRGBHandling /UseDocumentProfile /UseDocumentBleed false >> << /AllowImageBreaks true /AllowTableBreaks true /ExpandPage false /HonorBaseURL true /HonorRolloverEffect false /IgnoreHTMLPageBreaks false /IncludeHeaderFooter false /MarginOffset [ 0 0 0 0 ] /MetadataAuthor () /MetadataKeywords () /MetadataSubject () /MetadataTitle () /MetricPageSize [ 0 0 ] /MetricUnit /inch /MobileCompatible 0 /Namespace [ (Adobe) (GoLive) (8.0) ] /OpenZoomToHTMLFontSize false /PageOrientation /Portrait /RemoveBackground false /ShrinkContent true /TreatColorsAs /MainMonitorColors /UseEmbeddedProfiles false /UseHTMLTitleAsMetadata true >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /HWResolution [2400 2400] /PageSize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice