I’ve had two pieces of feeback. Dorothea Salo scripsit:
Provocative statements
[ …] I neither endorse nor decry these [PMR’s views]. I merely want to call attention to the fact that Peter Murray-Rust is one of the people we serve, and he’s not sure what we’re for.
If that doesn’t provoke something in us—and I don’t mean merely dismay—we deserve to go down to a dusty death.
PMR: Thanks Dorothea – who has valuably used the blogosphere to praise and criticize aspects of librariana academica. The purpose of my talk at Oxford is not to criticize libraries but to paint a picture of what – if anything – the words “library” and “librarian” should or will mean in the future. I am giving a personal perspective – as I was asked to. Blogging a talk before it’s given is a great way to work out ideas, to correct inaccuracies and to get major positive input.
PMR: I want libraries to succeed and porsper and be a vital part of the defence of scholarship. I am not a library-naysayer in the way that Francis Crick (at Churchill College) was a chapel-basher (more later).
…and from James
Hi Peter. Thanks for your post. You speak truth to power about libraries and missed opportunities to be driving forces in the scholarship process. I have often thought that libraries should have been more forceful about continuing to build collections when journal literature went digital. Instead, they largely left the field to commercial publishers. We have been dealing with that mistake for the last 15 years as journal prices have skyrocketed.
PMR: Journal prices are a problem, but not the most important one. The primary question is whether academia owns its scholarschip.
By way of defending libraries, might I add a bit of context to your cogent analysis? While libraries have, as you rightly pointed out, been somewhat risk-averse, there are plenty of examples of libraries creating and/or participating in projects to increase access to scholarly information — Jstor, Project Muse, OAIster, LC’s American memory Project. Open Access, Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance just to name a few.
PMR: I need to make it very clear that lots of libraries are doing great work (and Librarian(s) appear on my list). I’ll therefore skip Project Muse, and American memory Project. But I am writing as a scientist – that is what I was asked to do. I’ll cover Open Access later. Could I and my chemist colleagues do their current work without JStor, OAIster? I doubt if any of them have heard of them.
I will absolutely add
Brewster Kahle who (from WP) is a U.S. internet entrepreneur, activist and digital librarian. Kahle graduated from MIT in 1982 with a BS degree in Computer Science & Engineering where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. The emphasis of his studies was artificial intelligence; he studied under Marvin Minsky and W. Daniel Hillis.
He was an early member of the Thinking Machines team, where he invented the WAIS system. He later started WAIS, Inc. (sold to AOL), the nonprofit Internet Archive, and the related for-profit Alexa Internet (sold to Amazon.com). He continues as Director of the Internet Archive as of 2007[update]. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a key supporter of the Open Content Alliance. His stated goal is “Universal Access to all Knowledge”.
In his TED Talk on building free digital library[2], Kahle describes his vision of free digital library, which contains books, free music concerts, TV programs, snapshot of internet etc.
PMR: I’m not aware of the complete history but this sounds as if it sprang from a librarian but not from a Library? Good, that Libraries took this up, but I think we need to look to more than witing to pick up new ideas.
I’m also not sure that your estimation about academics unwittingly giving up their copyright is completely accurate. I agree that librarians should have been — and should continue to be — more vocal about copyright (I’m playing my part by working with questioncopyright.org). However, I think academics have to take some responsibility for that as well.
PMR: Academics ultimately take complete responsibility and the more senior, the more responsibility. Much of the current mess in scholarship is because Principals and Presidents faild to spot the trends and defend their own. But Libraries should act as a touchstome of the problems and be constantly alerting management to the absolutely necessity to defend scholarship.
My takeaway from your post is that librarians and academics need to work more closely and communicate better so as to build systems like institutional repositories, share information about the best ways to facilitate research, control information and make sure it is always put under a system that facilitates and expands scholarship. I take up your challenge. I hope other readers of this post will do the same.
PMR: many thanks, I hope they will.