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- Description
- Table of Contents
- About the author
- Reviews
A creative thinker on topics related to library collections and scholarly publishing, Rick Anderson does not back away from controversy. "Whenever we, as members of an organization like a library, are forced to choose between good things, we may start by trying to figure out some way to have both things," he writes in the preface. "But in many cases, that will turn out to be impossible and we'll have to decide which good thing is going to take priority over the other. We can't make that decision without invoking values, and the moment we start invoking values is when the conversation can take a really difficult and interesting turn." When it's time for your organization to make choices and set priorities, this collection of essays, articles, white papers, and blog posts will provide conversation starters for your strategic discussions. Anderson offers engaging, persuasive arguments on a range of timely topics, such as:
- the decline of print;
- patron-driven acquisitions;
- Open Access (OA);
- blacklisting publishers and relations with publishers' sales reps;
- patron privacy;
- symptoms of zealotry;
- unintended consequences of the print-on-demand model; and
- how to define library value.
Ideal for browsing, the ideas in this collection will kickstart your brainstorming sessions and spur your organization to confront choices head on.
Preface
Section I Libraries and Their Collections, Now and in the Future
1 Being Essential Is Not Enough
2 My Name Is Ozymandias, King of Kings
3 The Crisis in Research Librarianship
4 The Portal Problem: The Twin Plights of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Library Collection
5 On Necessity, Virtue, and Digging Holes with Hammers
6 Can, Should, and Will
7 How Sacred Are Our Patrons' Privacy Rights? Answer Carefully
8 Crazy Idea #274: Just Stop Collecting
9 Local and Global, Now and Forever: A Matrix Model of "Depth Perception" in Library Work
10 A Quiet Culture War in Research Libraries—and What It Means for Librarians, Researchers, and Publishers
11 Interrogating the American Library Association's "Core Values" Statement
12 Asserting Rights We Don't Have: Libraries and "Permission to Publish"
13 Frenemies: The Perfect and the Good, the Noisy and the Important
14 What Patron-Driven Acquisition Does and Doesn't Mean: An FAQ
15 Reference Services, Scalability, and the Starfish Problem
16 Kitten in a Beer Mug: The Myth of the Free Gift
17 You Might Be a Zealot If . . .
18 It's Not about the Workflow: Patron-Centered Practices for Twenty-First-Century Serialists
19 Can't Buy Us Love: The Declining Importance of Library Books and the Rising Importance of Special Collections
20 On Knowing the Value of Everything and the Price of Nothing
21 Preservation, Yes—but What Shall We Preserve?
22 The Struggle for Library Space
Section II Scholarly Communication and Library-Publisher Relations
23 On Advocacy, Analysis, and the Vital Importance of Knowing the Difference
24 Signal Distortion: Why the Scholarly Communication Economy Is So Weird
25 Six Mistakes Your Sales Reps Are Making—and Six That Librarians Are Making
26 Prices, Models, and Fairness: A (Partly) Imaginary Phone Conversation
27 Print-on-Demand and the Law of Unintended Consequences
28 Quality and Relevance: A Matrix Model for Thinking about Scholarly Books and Libraries
29 No Such Thing as a Bad Book? Rethinking "Quality" in the Research Library
30 No, You May Not Come Train My Staff
31 On the Likelihood of Academia "Taking Back" Scholarly Publishing
32 Is a Rational Discussion of Open Access Possible?
33 CC BY, Copyright, and Stolen Advocacy
34 Open-Access Rhetoric, Economics, and the Definition of "Research"
35 CC BY and Its Discontents: A Growing Problem for Open Access
36 Deceptive Publishing: Why We Need a Blacklist, and Some Suggestions on How to Do It Right
37 The NPR Model and the Financing of Scholarly Communication
Index
”Offers a thought-provoking tour of local and global, practical and theoretical, short-term and long-term issues facing libraries today."
— Library Journal
”Anderson’s thoughtful essays are enjoyable and provocative."
— Catholic Library World
”Anderson combines a direct, conversational style with crisp, analytic arguments that make for enjoyable and informative reading on topics both large and small ... I highly recommend this book."
— Against the Grain
”Thought-provoking and easily readable—perfect to share with colleagues or with a library study group. Anderson shows a clear understanding of the issues in academic libraries."
— Information Today