A tough line of thought. Much of the way we acquire things is in the market
place where it's not a matter of the producer charging whatever they think
they can get away with but a matter of the producer producing an item it
thinks consumers will want and then having to come to terms with whether
it's a good product for the price. There are a zillion variables but for
some of us what we buy is of the "what is someone's castoff is another's
bargain". I shop the bargains and I guess others do too. When we pay by the
bite - product ordered to specification - we pay top price or whatever the
producer feels like. There's no 'market place competition", no overloaded
inventory, and no comcomitant price reductions.

Somehow in all of this digitalization there will have to be some easier ease
of access, some free use access. Everyone does not have the funds to pay for
the just-in-time inventory that seems to be the fashion these days. Things
have not got shaken out yet in this conception of the way the market will
go. Why people go to libraries is to use without paying by the bite.

Garry Church
Periodicals Librarian
Yeary Library
Laredo Community College
Laredo, TX
<gchurch@LAREDO.CC.TX.US>

>2 messages, 259 lines:
>
>(1)---------------------------
>Date:         Tue, 15 Jan 2002 14:49:16 -0600
>From:         Melissa H. Fayad" <FayadM@MISSOURI.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Rethinking "Collections" and Selection in the
PostGutenberg Age
>
>When the E-book seemed to be a new popular choice, the idea of online books
>looked like it might be a real possibility.  However, last I read, the
>E-book market has crashed.  Personally, the only time I have to read is on
>the run.  If I can't slip a book into my purse(which is fairly roomy)to
read
>while I wait in line or read during my lunch, I won't have a chance to read
>it.  Online books won't work until they are portable.
>
>Melissa H. Fayad
>Technical Services Assistant
>University of Missouri-Columbia
>Law Library
>224 Hulston Hall
>Columbia, MO  65211-4190
>
>(573) 884-4455 (voice mail available)
>fax (573) 882-9676
>http://www.law.missouri.edu/library/
><FayadM@MISSOURI.EDU>
>
>(2)---------------------------
>Date:         Tue, 15 Jan 2002 16:29:22 -0500
>From:         Sharon Wieczorek <swieczor@MERCYHURST.EDU>
>Organization: Mercyhurst College
>Subject:      Re: Rethinking "Collections" and Selection in the
PostGutenberg Age
>
>This is very interesting but human nature will overpower any thoughts
>along the lines of complete digital reading. People want to see and feel
>the printed word and until computers are intuitive and small enough to fit
>in the palm of our hand with voice commands there is no way that people
>will pay to sit at a terminal to read fiction or pay for loose pages.
>
>On the other hand, a "print and bind" on demand setting might become the
>future of the library. This could be a hands-on environment for the
>patron. There could be info downloaded from the Internet, direct from the
>publisher, or from CD's on hand. A fee would have to be considered in
>these circumstances.
>
>Any one out there feel the same way?
>
>Sharon Wieczorek
>Serials Supervisor
>Mercyhurst College
>Hammermill Library
>Erie, PA 16546
>swieczor@mercyhurst.edu
>
>Michael SPENCER wrote:
>
>> This is a very interesting and worthwhile posting.
>>      However, instead of reading a bound book would people spend twenty
hours reading at a
>> computer terminal or using a set of unbound printouts? And would it be
less expensive to
>> provide a book or to constantly pay for providing a book-length file to a
series of users
>> from such a provider, particularly when it comes to best sellers or
publications with high
>> use for other reasons?
>>      Obvously, I am skeptical of predictions that books will be
superseded.
>>
>>  Michael SPENCER <mspencer@SBU.EDU>
>>
>> >>> harnad@COGPRINTS.SOTON.AC.UK 01/15/02 10:41 AM >>>
>> Join the debate at: http://www.text-e.org
>> on "Libraries in the Digital Age" (Grunberg et al. 2002)
>>
>> Below is my own commentary -- SH
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> Rethinking "Collections" and Selection in the PostGutenberg Age
>>
>> Stevan Harnad
>>
>> Librarians, in virtue of their profession (ex officio, so to speak),
>> are being propelled toward the digital future even faster than their
>> users. Yet they are still not seeing far enough, hence not thinking
>> radically enough. They are still thinking in terms of incoming
>> "collections," a Gutenberg, object-based view, updating only their
>> notion of the medium of the collection (papers, CD-ROM, online). I
>> think this is short-sighted. What is needed is a PostGutenberg,
>> bit-based view, of distributed access rather than local acquisitions.
>>
>> There will still be some selection, but there will no longer be
>> collection. Digital "holdings" will be distributed worldwide, more like
>> the current "interlibrary loan" model, but for all "inventory" (which
>> will only be virtual) and not just for those works that are not "owned"!
>> In other words, there will be site-licensing nd/or pay-per-view for
>> accessing the bits, which will not be held in a local "collection,"
>> particularly (though sometimes it might be easier or faster to store
>> some bits locally).
>>
>> Yes, there will be some selection and taste exercised in designing
>> the local license agreements, because no library will be able to afford
>> limitless access to all bits for all its users (and, n.b.! we are only
>> speaking of non-give-away bits now: I will return to the special case
>> of give-away bits shortly). But these will only be default options,
>> because, as is true with interlibrary loan today, in principle, despite
>> the limits of a library's specific, selected holdings, today's user
>> can, by special dispensation and intervention, usually get a hold of
>> unheld works too. (A digital library, by the way, is largely a
>> consortium of users, giving the users greater access than if they had
>> to pay for it individually.)
>>
>> There will be only two exceptions to this. One will be the analog
>> collection, which will be the digital library's counterpart of today's
>> "rare book collection." (The Gutenberg book is merely the extension
>> of the erstwhile rare book, into the PostGutenberg age.)
>>
>> The second exception will be a more dramatic departure from what
>> libraries are used to doing, yet they are undoubtedly the best place
>> and qualified to do it right: Research institutional libraries
>> (e.g., most university libraries) will not only be CONSUMERS of the
>> global distributed bits, they will also be PROVIDERS, in the special
>> case of the give-away literature: The refereed research output
>> of their own researchers will be stored and made accessible as an
>> OUTGOING collection, through interoperable institutional self-archiving
>> (see my own target essay in this symposium:
>> http://www.text-e.org/debats/index.cfm?conftext_ID=7 )
>>
>> In exchange for providing online access to this outgoing collection
>> for free, libraries and their institutions will gain free incoming
>> access to the full contents of all the refereed periodicals they
>> curretly have to pay for (dearly), because those will be the contents
>> of all the other institutions' outgoing refereed research collections.
>> And 70-90% of the annual windfall savings on the former serials
>> expenditures for this give-away refereed research will then be available
>> to be spent on the licences for the much larger non-give-away corpus
>> (while 10-30% will need to be redirected to paying the journals for
>> refereeing the instition's annual outgoing collection).
>>
>> (To a certain extent, this distributed self-archiving model will also
>> apply to esoteric outgoing manuscripts that never sought nor would have
>> found an access-fee-based market.)
>>
>> I close with some of the skywritten quote/commenting without which
>> such a skywriting exchange would be incomplete:
>>
>> EQUIPE BPI: "[In Libraries in the Digital Age] in what way could the
>> traditional functions of public reading establishments - i.e.
>> selecting, acquiring and processing documents, making them available to
>> the public, conserving them or withdrawing them from collections - be
>> transformed, and with what consequences?"
>>
>> Most of these "traditional" functions will become defunct (at the
>> individual library level), apart from the selection of the licensing
>> options and the preservation of the outgoing collection. (There will also
>> be some distributed mirroring, backups, etc., for the global
>> collections, across institutions.)
>>
>> EQUIPE BPI: "One cannot leaf through an electronic document or easily
>> recognize its quality."
>>
>> Every feature of analog "leafing" can be simulated digitally (right
>> down to the V-Book, q.v.). But the nuclear navigational and analytic
>> powers of digital "leafing" will eclipse most of those capabilities
>> anyway. (I'll choose "grepping" over "gripping" any day!)
>>
>> EQUIPE BPI: "The electronic document seems volatile and difficult to
>> contain."
>>
>> We'll get used to this PostGutenberg fact of life soon enough. It is
>> really a blessing in the disguise of a violated tradition. The fact
>> that digital documents can bereadily revised and updated and
>> interlinked is a pure advantage, with no loss whatsoever, because
>> versions can be identified and tracked as formally and compulsively as
>> we desire. (Let us not hold new intellectual powers at arms length in
>> the service erstwhile intellectual limitations and their associated
>> dysfunctional habits! After all, intellectual glut could be managed by
>> outlawing further increases in intellectual production, or taxing
>> excess output at unaffordably high prices...)
>>
>> EQUIPE BPI: "How is one supposed to monitor what is being made
>> available to readers when they are being offered open access to
>> Internet? How is it possible to exercise one's professional expertise,
>> which starts with a motivated, qualified and coherent selection? How,
>> above all, is one to prevent the user from being buried under an
>> avalanche of information, far from the safe paths so carefully kept by
>> the librarian?"
>>
>> Don't try to salvage obsolete Gutenberg responsibilities. Be happy they
>> are no longer pertinent! Digital monitoring and analysis is infinitely
>> more powerful, sensitive and efficient than anything one could have
>> dreamt of in the Gutenberg age. (Usage could in principle be tracked
>> right down to the last bit.) The free internet collections are
>> irrelevant (although navigational aids are welcome from any source,
>> including digital librarians.) Selectivity need only be exercised in
>> making the licensing agreements, and that can be done pretty much the
>> old way (based on what your library can afford and what your users
>> need). And the digital medium will breed more and more powerful means
>> of managing its embarras de richesses -- ne vous en faites pas!
>>
>> EQUIPE BPI: "faced with this excess of information, professional advice
>> will become more and more indispensable, not only in order to locate
>> relevant information, but also, and above all, to establish defined and
>> lively collections."
>>
>> Collections are a red herring! But navigational and classificational
>> help are always welcome.
>>
>> EQUIPE BP: "One can easily understand that every document or every
>> access to paid information should be analysed and that, budgets being
>> limited, there is an obligation to make choices. But what happens when
>> the immaterial is also free...?"
>>
>> Less to worry about. (But not all of it will be free. Worry about
>> the non-give-away portion! And do your part with your own institution's
>> give-away output to ensure that, by the Golden Rule, access to THAT
>> portion is at last freed!)
>>
>> EQUIPE BPI: "subscribing to an on-line periodical means paying access
>> rights which can be terminated with the end of the subscription or the
>> disappearance of the title or even that of the publisher. In the past,
>> when confronted with such a situation, the library remained owner of
>> the collections it had accumulated throughout its subscription.
>> What is the current state of affairs?"
>>
>> Vide supra. Institutional self-archiving will free access to this
>> anomalous (because give-away) literature and will thereby make this
>> question moot. (For non-give-away serials, licensing agreements can
>> cover local storage and re-use rights, short- and long-term. This is
>> not a big enough market for anyone to waste time worrying about. The
>> big one is the refereed research serials corpus, and that will be taken
>> care of by the self-archived outgoing institutional collections, plus
>> suitable distributed mirroring, backup, and preservation arrangements
>> among the institutions.)
>>
>> EQUIPE BPI: "[Virtual library?] there is nothing to prevent us from
>> imagining that in the future, distance readers, as long as they have
>> headsets with cathode screens or sensory gloves, will be able to enter
>> into spaces of the library reconstituted in 3D, stroll among the
>> shelves and during their perambulations happen upon a book, open it,
>> leaf through it, put it down or check it out by downloading it on the
>> latest e-book model with electronic ink. Perhaps, in this scenario we
>> will be able to speak of a virtual visit to a virtual library."
>>
>> See the earlier discussio of V-Books:
>> http://www.text-e.org/debats/index.cfm?conftext_ID=13
>> People won't want to "perambulate he shelves" -- just to navigate the
>> bits.
>>
>> Stevan Harnad
>>
>> NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free
>> access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the
>> American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01):
>>
>>     http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
>>                             or
>>     http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
>>
>> You may join the list at the amsci site.
>>
>> Discussion can be posted to:
>>
>>     september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org