[Irtalk] Open Access and its impact on the future of the university librarian

Fri Oct 26 12:12:49 SAST 2012

The short answer is that one does not necessarily distrust it either - we are for example involved in FORCE11, an important discussion forum on electronic publishing (including open publishing), which is driven by someone from Elsevier. Publishers do sometimes invest in trying to think honestly about the future. 

Eve

Honorary Research Associate
Centre for Educational Technology
Associate
IP Law and Policy Research Unit
University of Cape Town 
>>> Hilton Gibson  10/26/12 11:17 AM >>>
Basically, ask yourself, do you "trust" a report sponsored by SAGE?

On 26 October 2012 11:09, Allison Fullard <afullard at uwc.ac.za> wrote:
Dear Elsabe
At the very moment that you sent this email, the UWC Librarians were discussing this report during the monthly Reading Club!  Thanks for highlighting the aspects that are relevant for all libraries.  The report presents the outcomes of a discussion on the impact of Open Access, held at British Library by a number of prominent UK librarians with one or two from US and one from Middle East.

The policy climate in UK must be quite disconcerting and we can understand how the Finch Report and the revised RCUK policy are driving the need to better understand the changing environment for UK libraries, specifically in the sense that these policies focus on gold OA while downplaying green OA. 

For this reason the Report seems to emphasise gold OA and specifically the budgets for article processing charges and features debate about who may manage these resources and the consequences for libraries.  We note that Sage was sponsoring and co-organiser of the meeting.  For me, I had a sense that there was rather an uncritical acceptance that publishers shall sustain their current levels of income with the result that workflows (and hierarchies) at universities are rearranged to maintain status quo in the publishing enterprise!

Regards
Allison

Allison Fullard
Deputy Director: Library Services
University of the Western Cape
Ph:  27-(0)21 959-2923  
Fax:  27-(0)21 959-2659

Private Bag X17, Bellville 7535
South Africa

http://www.uwc.ac.za/library 

>>> "Elsabe Olivier" <Elsabe.Olivier at up.ac.za> 2012/10/26 09:20 AM >>>

Dear Colleagues

Interesting report on Open access and its impact on the role of academic libraries attached:

The role of libraries
• Open access will reduce the importance of libraries developing institutional collections but key librarian skills will still be required
• External discovery systems may be favoured over the library catalogue
• Libraries are well placed to – and in many cases already do – manage institutional repositories
• Managing metadata will be very important for good discoverability of open access resources
• Functions such as metadata management and preservation are likely to be done on a web scale rather than on an institutional level
• Individual library value will be judged on quality of provision rather than on breadth of collection; value will also be added by digitizing and making available unique collections
• Libraries will increasingly need to work together and share functions and services
• Attention will shift from the library to the librarian: ‘the information professional is the library of the future.’

Suggested actions
• Academic libraries need to evolve to continue to meet the changing needs of their users. Libraries will need to look for ways to work together; greater dialogue is needed between libraries about strategies for dealing with open access and best practices
• Clear communication of open access, its benefits, processes and implications is needed for researchers
• A review should be taken exploring attitudes towards the role of institutional collections as more content is available as OA
• As with all publishing models, open access carries both benefits and costs. The group believes that good policy outcomes will only result if those involved in the marketplace are willing to acknowledge and evaluate both and calls upon those involved to mards
Elsabé

Elsabe Olivier 
Manager: Open Scholarship
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Department Library Services
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