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Managing change and sending signals in the marketplace
Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, Vol. 13, pp. 217-225, 1989 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT
0364~6408/89 $3.00 + .OO Copyright 0 1989 Pergamon Press plc
IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE
MANAGING CHANGE AND SENDING SIGNALS IN THE MARKETPLACE BARBARA M. ROBINSON Management Consultant 3009 Hillegass Avenue Berkeley, CA 94705
Collection development in the electronic age involves a great deal more than simply selecting and deselecting traditional print materials. These days it requires a juggling act. Staff involved in collection development usually have at least three balls in the air at one time: acquisitions, preservation, and providing access to information in electronic formats for clientele. These three activities represent different facets of building, using, and maintaining the collection [ 11. Every library is engaged in this juggling act. The difficulty is that library managers expect staff to be proactive and enthusiastic, a state which is difficult to achieve when staff are forced into a reactive stance by external factors such as soaring serial prices and staggering preservation problems. Each of these three activities is in competition for scarce staff time and collection-related funds. Each poses an entirely different set of management problems and can easily be viewed as a full-time job which requires specialized skills and expertise. And finally, in recent years, staff managing these three activities have been buffeted by rapid change. To manage change successfully, collection development staff must be crystal-ball readers as well as jugglers. With costs rising for all types of information, and rising unpredictably, projecting future budget requirements for each of the three activities has become a frustrating guessing game. For example, the extraordinary increase in some journal prices has so infuriated academic libraries that some members of the Association of Research Libraries briefly considered filing an antitrust suit [2]. In the l!XOs, when there were considerable funds available for acquisitions and the dollar was strong, librarians had sufficient latitude in their budgets to be able to build collections in all formats. The variety of formats included monographs, serials, government documents, and microforms. Preservation was not the monumental problem it has become today as our collections turn to chemical ashes [3]. And online searching of bibliographic data bases as an alternative, or as a complement, to searching print materials was still in the early stages of gestation and was not yet a competitor for acquisition funds. 217
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As we enter the 199Os, however, the scenario has changed. There is an ever-increasing choice when buying traditional print materials because of the rate of growth in traditional publishing. Journal publishing in many cases is bumping into monographic publishing, forcing librarians to choose between books and journals. Acquisitions budgets have not been able to keep up with escalating serial prices, to say nothing of the increasing costs of monographs and the hefty price increases in government documents as a result of new pricing policies by the federal government. In addition, the dramatic devaluation of the dollar in recent years has reduced our ability to buy abroad. Librarians are drawn to buying journals because they promise greater currency. In science and technology, the rate of change is so extraordinarily rapid that the lag time in monographic publishing is considered by researchers to be far too slow. New scholarly and trade journals on narrowly focused subjects are also proliferating-a phenomenon called “twigging.” [41 Charles Hamaker at Louisiana State University Library (LSU) has been particularly outspoken in his reaction to the price rises of foreign journals [5]. Journals published by Elsevier, Springer, and Pergamon account for 25 percent of LSU’s serials expenditures. At the rate their subscription prices are increasing, they could easily consume a greater share of the total acquisitions budget in the future [6]. For example, Elsevier’s journal, Brain Research, in one year, rose in price from $2,871 to $3,826.’ A 32 percent jump in price without prior warning would be hard for any library to absorb without having to cancel other orders. As a consequence of this financial squeeze, collection development staff are often forced to cancel serial subscriptions, or to forgo buying one or more monographs, in order to acquire a new serial title [8]. To do so, they often have to interrupt the regular work flow and take time usually spent making acquisitions decisions to make deselection decisions. At many libraries, revising approval plans and standing order profiles placed with jobbers is no longer a once a year event. Consequently, the lack of warning regarding price increases not only throws off projected budgets and skews the bookkeeping required to track obligated funds, but also creates extraordinary time management problems. One librarian commented that the combination of a price increase with no prior warning adds insult to injury. This sense of frustration prompted another librarian to say that she objects more to the uncertainty then to the price rise. In managing change, prior warning is paramount. These pressures, which are triggering acquisition and deselection choices, are not limited to forcing trade-offs among serial titles or between serials and monographs. The complexity of selection is compounded daily as information becomes available in a variety of electronic formats. Some of these formats are complements to the print materials, while others are supplements, and still others are substitutes. The array of formats used in parallel publishing is both bewildering and exciting. The appearance of CD-ROM, for example, presents new opportunities as well as new problems [9]. Online searching has already become an integral part of the information tool kit for both collection development and reference staff. The industry has expanded enormously in the last fifteen years. It is now a multi-billion dollar a year industry which produces nearly five thousand publicly accessible data bases [lo]. Not surprisingly, an increasing percentage of library acquisitions funds are being allocated to underwriting the costs of online searching. Furthermore, online searching has altered the way in which reference librarians can present information to clients. Information available online, or on CD-ROM, allows library staff to customize and package information in new ways as they respond to client demand. The dynamic nature of these electronic formats also presents policy decisions for collection development and reference staff. In effect, librarians become publishers as they sift and filter infor-
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mation generated electronically and package it in a “published” format for use by the client. Deciding how much of the acquisition budget to allocate to online searching adds yet another management problem to the constellation and another element of uncertainty to projecting costs. If libraries had R&D funds which were separable from the acquisitions budget, and library staff could set aside time from their regular duties for testing and introducing new technologies, the stress on collection development staff and on the acquisitions budget might be more manageable. Regrettably, few libraries have the luxury of this approach. Consequently, while these electronic formats represent an exciting opportunity, they also severely tax library budgets and staff. No doubt, sorting out the old and new formats will become easier as review media catch up and as staff become more familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of new hardware and software. Predicting costs usually becomes easier over time, as in the case of online searching, although the unexpected rises in journal prices shake one’s faith in our ability to make cost projections. At present, however, collection development staff must spend time not only reviewing the content and coverage of each prospective item, but also deciding whether to buy an item in print form, machine-readable form, or both. For example, according to Jean Loup of the Document Center at the University of Michigan Library, the Federal Register can now be obtained in paper, microfiche, CD-ROM, and online [l 11. Michigan currently receives the paper copy of the Federal Register free because it is a selective depository. Ms. Loup says that if they were to be charged for the hard copy in the future, Michigan would pay the annual $300 subscription fee and still continue to buy the silver halide fiche from the Congressional Information Service (CIS) at $405 per year for archival purposes. In addition, Michigan buys the separately published index to the Federal Register, which is also published by CIS, at an annual cost of $640 per year. Not long ago, Michigan also bought the CD-ROM version for $795 from Video Laser Systems in Toledo, Ohio, in order to be able to search key words on a current version which is user-friendly and offers additional access points to their users [12]. Adding all this up, Michigan currently spends $1,840 on the Federal Register, exclusive of the hardware costs of the CD-ROM player. Add to that the cost of the hard copy, assuming that the government did charge Michigan, and the total would come to $2,140. And that is exclusive of subscribing to Federal Register Abstracts, which is available from Dialog at $75 per connect hour with a $9 per hour telecommunication charge and 20 cents per full record printed off-line, or buying an unlimited yearly subscription to the Federal Register Service, offered by Legi-Slate for $6,500 a year per password [13]. A library purchasing all the print and fiche items listed above, and using ten hours search time on Dialog with five hundred offline citations along with a subscription to Legi-Slate’s service, could spend an additional $7,440, for a grand total approaching $10,000 for access to one title in several formats. As if embracing the new technologies and trying to slice the budget to accommodate both print and electronic media are not challenge enough, many collection development staff have also been saddled with the monumental problems and associated costs of dealing with preserving the collection. The only positive thing to say about preservation is that it is an issue facing all libraries with collections of.any size. It is really a collective problem, as are escalating journal prices and the impact of electronic media on acquisitions budgets. Organizations such as the Research Libraries Group and the Association of Research Libraries are working with their respective members to tackle the problems collectively, an appropriate strategy for deal ing with expensive and complex problems.
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Indeed, cooperative strategic planning is a smart way to manage change of this magnitude. As part of this approach, the library community needs to send clear and coordinated signals to the marketplace, which in this case is the publishing industry. For example, it cannot make economic sense for publishers to produce books on acidic paper and then have libraries pay a fortune to deacidify them. It should be possible for libraries, collectively, to work out a way to send an effective market signal to publishers about the need to produce archival quality publications. The first and most basic step in strategic planning is to determine the principal business of a given organization. While this may sound obvious, organizations often misunderstand what business they are in or misread the market. Libraries and publishers (trade and scholarly) are closely linked and, in many ways, serve similar functions. Both are in the information management business or, as Ken Ring of EDUCOM calls it, the knowledge management business. Both package and disseminate information, and both devote significant manpower resources to selection. Selection is just another term for making choices. Collection development staff have to choose what to buy, and publishers have to decide what to publish. Publishers are as actively engaged in selection as are their counterparts in libraries. They have to decide what to publish, what formats to select, and when to reprint, remainder, or pulp. Should they publish journals or monographs? Should they publish a title in a conventional format, such as print or microform, or in one of the dynamic formats, such as CD-ROM or online, or in more than one format? Many publishers are struggling with these decisions without fully understanding the implications for their internal operations, their product lines, and ultimately the cumulative effect on their marketplace. Vannevar Bush’s exhortation to focus on selection appeared over forty years ago in The Atlantic Monthly: Publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. . . . A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted. . . . The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed [14].
So everyone up and down the line, from publisher to library to user, is involved in selection. The danger of failing to make the right selection decisions can be deadly. In the opinion of John P. Dessauer, trade publishing is so out of touch with its market that he believes it is dying [15]. He contends that 80 percent of trade titles consistently fail because of two “suicidal shortcomings,” which are “. . . the inability of publishers to market their wares, and their self-imposed isolation from their readers”[l6]. If this is the case, then all the more reason why librarians, as a group, must find ways to have both trade and scholarly publishers listen to their concerns about issues such as the impact of parallel publishing on budgets and the effect that serial prices have on overall library buying power. Libraries represent a significant portion of their total market. Rather than view publishers as adversaries, it would be far more productive if the library community were to work together with publishers and help them to understand their market better. It is just possible that if librarians and publishers engage in strategic phtnmng, both separately and together, and if publishers pay closer attention to market signals generated by librarians, then the dust might begin to settle and the climate improve. No matter how each chooses to proceed, it is a given that both collection development staff and publishers must continue to make choices. Making choices seems to be part of the human condition. And failing to choose simply results in having others make the choices for us. Victor Fuchs, a professor at both the medical school and the economics department at Stan-
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in the Marketplace
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ford University, presents three fundamental observations about the world which drive choice: resources are scarce in relation to human wants; resources have alternative uses; and people have different wants, with significant variation in the relative importance they attach to them [17]. Many of us in the library world have what Fuchs characterizes as the romantic view. We want it all. “The romantic is misled into confusing the real world with the Garden of Eden. Because it denies the inevitabilityof choice, the romantic point of view is impotent to deal with the basic economic problems that face every society.“[ 181 Furthermore, we are not only romantics but we also fit Fuchs description of taking the authoritarian view. We talk about what people need or should have, yet we have a hard time coming to grips with scarcity and finite resources. What parts of the publishing process are valued by those involved in collection development? I suspect that what collection development staff value highly is the quality control which publishers traditionally provide, Quality control pertains more to the contents of a publication than to its packaging. Whether the title is conventionally published via print or is dynamically published using new technologies such as CD-ROM, collection development staff expect publishers to exercise editorial control and manage the production process. Electronic publishing has not reduced the need for highly trained staff to perform these functions. Assuming that quality control of the content is of paramount concern to the library community, it is a given that the end product is costly. In the past, the physical quality of the publication provided an indication of the quality of the contents. A welldesigned book signalled a parallel investment in refereeing, rewriting, and editing. With the advent of desktop publishing, the link between look and content is removed. It is now far easier and cheaper to make a publication look professional. On the other hand, online access and electronic publishing provide new modes of delivering information which do not depend on packaging or traditional distribution outlets such as bookstores. Again, the links between packaging, delivery mode, and content are broken. It is important that both publishers and libraries recognize the implications of this new environment. Libraries need quality control and publishers still need to provide selection and editorial services. But libraries need to understand that these services are.no cheaper, even though it is far cheaper now to produce and duplicate the resulting product. Libraries are now using techniques such as cooperative collection development and are relying on new delivery mechanisms for resource sharing. While the use of new technology is commendable, it may not reduce costs. For example, if libraries successfully share scholarly journals, then journal sales will fall. In this case, unit prices will have to rise as publishers are forced to spread the same editorial costs over shorter runs. The net effect may be to increase rather than reduce the costs to libraries and publishers collectively of producing and disseminating high-quality journals. The changes in the publishing environment have led to confusion about the definition of publishing. On-demand publishing is really on-demand printing. Similarly, desk-top publishing is another misnomer. It is desk-top composing, not publishing. Yet another example is provided by electronic bulletin boards, which some describe as a new form of publishing. Such bulletin boards provide a new forum for communication-an electronic party line but, given the absence of editorial control, do not fit our definition of publishing. Publishing provides highly refined filters for quality control and provides the same services today as it always has. Publishers are still in the business of working with authors, selecting what should be published (often relying on time-consuming peer review), and deciding how much effort to invest in producing a good, readable product. Don’t confuse the media with the message. In conclusion, there are some steps that can be taken to understand and manage change
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in the evolving technological environment, First, it is important for libraries to shift from crisis management to strategic planning. They should seek areas of cooperation and dialogue, both with other libraries and with the publishing industry. Both sides of the market need to think about the long-term implications of the changes now underway. Second, there is a real need for applied research and development. It is expensive for publishers and libraries to experiment with new technologies, and it is extremely expensive for both to go down the wrong route. Libraries do not have venture capital or R&D funds. There is an opportunity here for government to play a role. Government could provide funds for demonstration grants which allow libraries and publishers to work together to experiment with new technology. Third, there is a continuing need to develop standards. Standardization reduces costs. For example, the collaboration between Sony and Philips to define a compact disc standard was essential in bringing the product to market. Compare this success with the current chaos in the CD-ROM market. Finally, it is very important to improve communication between publishers and the library community. Take a publisher out to lunch. Or better yet, invite one to take you out to lunch!
NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. 2.
3.
4.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
10.
11. 12.
Onlinesearchingand the use of electronic information resources is just as much a part of the collection today as titles in paper and in microform. In lieu of taking such steps, ARL has commissioned a study on the economics of serials publishing in order to understand better what factors are driving costs and whether, in fact, gouging is occurring. The study is now being conducted by a firm which specializes in economic consulting. For more of a flavor of the tenor of the discussions on this subject, see American Libraries, 4 (April 1988). 328. At the risk of fanning the anger of some librarians, I will mention that a representative of a major trade asso& ation representing the paper industry said to me, only half in jest, that I should be grateful for paper which selfdestructs. Given the peremrial space problems in libraries, having the collection reduced to dust means more room on the ranges! One suspects that a major motivation for the creation of new journals is the pressure on academics to publish in order to get tenure. Consequently, new journals are established to provide more outlets for academic publishing. Some publishers are critical of librarians for not being able to determine the relative value of these twigged journals. Constance Holden. “Libraries Stunned by Journal Prices Increases,” Science 236 (May 22, 1987), 908-9. Foreign journals account for 40 percent of LSU’s serial titles and 60 percent of the cost. Ibid., 908. Ibid. This approach might be called the “weed one to seed one” approach. At present, the problems include lack of standardization of the hardware; the relatively high set-up costs; the updating limitations of the format; as well as the still unknown archival problems. Evidently, CD disks are not as rugged as they are touted to be. A faculty member at the library school at Catholic University of America reported in a casual conversation that disks have developed a green mold in a library in Germany. In the Directoty of Online Data Ba.ws, volume 9, number 3, authored and published by Cuadra/Elsevier (July 1988). 3,893 data bases produced by 1723 data base producers are listed. The number of bibliographic, full text, numeric, and directory data bases is still increasing rapidly. Carlos Cuadra, at the national Online Meet@ this year, reported that there are now 4,700 publicly available data bases (See IMormufion To&, June 1988, 1). A Memorandum from Jean Loup to Jaia Barrett of the Association of Research Libraries, via electronic mail, April 16, 1987. Ms. Loup cautions that, in addition to the $795/year cost of the disk from Video Laser Systems in Toledo.software costs $595 and that the disk player costs $995. Given the lack of standardization in CD-ROM hardware, even a library which owns CD-ROM players might have to invest in a chip or board to make its existing UBdPment compatible, or be forced to buy new equipment.
Managing Change and Sending Signals in the Marketplace
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13. The Federal Register Service provides 14 access points for searching as well as the ability for each subscriber to create a personalized “current awareness” profile for automatically tracking selected topics. 14. Scattered quotes from Vannevar Bush, “AS We May Think,” in CD ROM The New Papyrus: The Current and Future State of the Art. Editedby Steve Lambert and Suzanne Ropiequet, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1986, 4-5, 12. 15. John P. Dessauer, “Perspectives: Editorial Isolation,” in The ABC Forum, August-September 1987, 3. 16. Ibid. 17. Victor R. Fuchs, Who Shall Live? Health, Economics, and Social Choice. New York: Basic Books, 1974,4-5. 18. Ibid.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
ON ELECTRONIC
PUBLISHING
Compiled by Barbara M. Robinson with assistance from the staff of the College of Library and Information Services Library (CLIS) University of Maryland Monographs and Bibliographies on Electronic Publishing: Baumgarten, Jon A. Electronic h Software Publishing: Law, Technology, and Business. New York: Law & Business, Inc., 1984. Dowlin, Ken E. The Electronic Library. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1984. Gorman, Michael, ed. Crossroads. Proceedings of the First National Conference of the Library and Information Technology Association, September 17-21, 1983. Chicago: American Library Association, 1984. Greenberger, Martin. Electronic Publishing Plus. White Plains, New York: Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc., 1985. Gurnsey, John. Electronic Document Delivery-III: Electronic Publishing Trends in the United States and Europe. Oxford: Learned Information, 1982. Gurnsey, John. The Information Professions in the Electronic Age. London: Clive Bingley, 1985. Helal, Ahmed H. and Weiss, Joachim W., eds. New Trends in Electronic Publishing and Electronic Libraries. Essen: Essen University Library, 1984. Hills, Philip J. Trends in Information Transfer. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982. Langlois, Ethel G. Scholarly Publishing in an Era of Change: Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting, Society for Scholarly Publishing, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2-4, 1980. Washington, D.C.: Society for Scholarly Publishing, 1981. Lowry, Anita and Stuveras, Junko, compilers. Scholarship in the Electronic Age: A Selected Bibliography on Research and Communication in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library Resources, February 1987. Moran, Barbara. Academic Libraries: The Changing Knowledge Centers of Colleges and Universities. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Research Report No. 8. Washington, D.C.: Association for the Study of Higher Education, 1984. Network Advisory Committee. Intellectual Property Rights In An Electronic Age: Proceedings of the Network Advisory Committee of the Library of Congress, April 22-24,1987. Washington, D.C.: Network Advisory Committee of the Library of Congress. (Forthcoming)
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Neustadt, Richard M. The Birth of Electronic Publishing: Legal and Economic Issues in Telephone, Cable and Over-the-Air Teletext and Videotext. White Plains, New York: Knowledge Industry Publications,. Inc., 1985. Office of Arts and Libraries. Working Group on Electronic Publishing. “The Impact of Electronic Publishing.” Electronic Publishing Review 3 (December 1983): 281-302. “Review of Comments.” Electronic Publishing Review 4 (December 1984): 289-298. Office of Technology Assessment. Intellectual Property Rights in an Age of Electronics and Information Communication. Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress OTA-CIT 302. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, April 1986. SKP Associates. The Future of the Book. Part II, New Technologies in Book Distribution: The United States Experience. A report prepared for the Center for the Book, Library of Congress. Paris: UNESCO, 1984. Spigai, Fran and Sommer, Peter. Guide to Electronic Publishing: Opportunities in Online and Viewdata Services. White Plains, New York: Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc., 1982. Some Journals Covering Electronic Publishing: Drexel Library Quarterly; Electronic Publishing Business; Electronic and Optical Publishing Review (formerly Electronic Publishing Review); Library Association Record; Microcomputers in Information Management ; Online; Optical Information Systems (formerly Videodisc and Optical Disk Magazine); Publisher’s Weekly; Reference Librarian ; Scholarly Publishing; Serials Review; and Special Libraries. Some Journal Articles on Electronic Publishing: Anderson, Barbara E. “Reading Reference Using Online Databases.” The Reference Librarian 15 (Fall 1986): 225-235. Auld, Larry. “Reader Interaction with the Online Journal.” Serials Review 12 (Summer/Fall 1986): 83-85. Baumol, William J., and Sue Anne Batey Blackman. “Electronics, the Cost Disease, and the Operation of Libraries.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 34 (May 1983): 181-191. Bowyer, Neil. “Electronic Publishing: 10 Questions and Answers.” New Library World 86 (June 1985): 107-8. Butler, Brett. “Scholarly Journals, Electronic Publishing, and Library Networks: From 1986 to 2000.” Serials Review 12 (Summer/Fall 1986): 47-52. Collier, Harry R. “Learned Information’s Electronic Magazine: A Case Study.” Serials Review 12 (Summer/Fall 1986): 69-82. Cronin, Blaise and John Martyn. “Public/Private Sector Interaction: A Review of Issues with Particular Reference to Document Delivery and Electronic Publishing. Aslib Proceedings 36 (October 1984): 373-391.
Managing Change and Sending Signals in the Marketplace
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Dougherty, Richard M. and Wendy P. Lougee. “What Will SURVIVE?” Library Journal 110 (February 1, 1985): 41-44. Lancaster, F.W., Laura S. Drasgow, and Ellen B. Marks. “The Changing Face of the Library: A Look at Libraries and Librarians in the Year 2001.” Collection Management 3 (Spring 1979): 55-77. Tarter, Blodwen. “Information Liability: New Interpretations for Electronic Publishing.” Online 61 (September 1986): 54-60. Manuals Related to Electronic Publishing: Association of American Publishers. Author’s Guide, volume I; Reference Manual on Electronic Manuscript Preparation and Markup, volume II; Markup of Mathematical Formulas, volume III; and Markup of Tabular Material, volume IV. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Publishers, 1986. (On order). Gordon, Michael. Running a Refereeing System. Leicester, England: Primary Communications Research Centre, University of Leicester, 1983. Grout, Bill. Desktop Publishing from A to Z. Berkeley, California: Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1986. (McKeldin only). Roth, Stephen F. The Computer Edge: Microcomputer Trends/Uses in Publishing. New York, R.R. Bowker Company, 1985. Rosenau, Fred S. and Chase, Leslie R. So You Want To Be A Profitable Database Publisher. Washington, D.C.: The Information Industry Association, 1983. University of Chicago Press. Chicago Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts: For Authors and Publishers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT
0364~6408/89 $3.00 + .OO Copyright 0 1989 Pergamon Press plc
IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE
MANAGING CHANGE AND SENDING SIGNALS IN THE MARKETPLACE BARBARA M. ROBINSON Management Consultant 3009 Hillegass Avenue Berkeley, CA 94705
Collection development in the electronic age involves a great deal more than simply selecting and deselecting traditional print materials. These days it requires a juggling act. Staff involved in collection development usually have at least three balls in the air at one time: acquisitions, preservation, and providing access to information in electronic formats for clientele. These three activities represent different facets of building, using, and maintaining the collection [ 11. Every library is engaged in this juggling act. The difficulty is that library managers expect staff to be proactive and enthusiastic, a state which is difficult to achieve when staff are forced into a reactive stance by external factors such as soaring serial prices and staggering preservation problems. Each of these three activities is in competition for scarce staff time and collection-related funds. Each poses an entirely different set of management problems and can easily be viewed as a full-time job which requires specialized skills and expertise. And finally, in recent years, staff managing these three activities have been buffeted by rapid change. To manage change successfully, collection development staff must be crystal-ball readers as well as jugglers. With costs rising for all types of information, and rising unpredictably, projecting future budget requirements for each of the three activities has become a frustrating guessing game. For example, the extraordinary increase in some journal prices has so infuriated academic libraries that some members of the Association of Research Libraries briefly considered filing an antitrust suit [2]. In the l!XOs, when there were considerable funds available for acquisitions and the dollar was strong, librarians had sufficient latitude in their budgets to be able to build collections in all formats. The variety of formats included monographs, serials, government documents, and microforms. Preservation was not the monumental problem it has become today as our collections turn to chemical ashes [3]. And online searching of bibliographic data bases as an alternative, or as a complement, to searching print materials was still in the early stages of gestation and was not yet a competitor for acquisition funds. 217
218
B. M. ROBINSON
As we enter the 199Os, however, the scenario has changed. There is an ever-increasing choice when buying traditional print materials because of the rate of growth in traditional publishing. Journal publishing in many cases is bumping into monographic publishing, forcing librarians to choose between books and journals. Acquisitions budgets have not been able to keep up with escalating serial prices, to say nothing of the increasing costs of monographs and the hefty price increases in government documents as a result of new pricing policies by the federal government. In addition, the dramatic devaluation of the dollar in recent years has reduced our ability to buy abroad. Librarians are drawn to buying journals because they promise greater currency. In science and technology, the rate of change is so extraordinarily rapid that the lag time in monographic publishing is considered by researchers to be far too slow. New scholarly and trade journals on narrowly focused subjects are also proliferating-a phenomenon called “twigging.” [41 Charles Hamaker at Louisiana State University Library (LSU) has been particularly outspoken in his reaction to the price rises of foreign journals [5]. Journals published by Elsevier, Springer, and Pergamon account for 25 percent of LSU’s serials expenditures. At the rate their subscription prices are increasing, they could easily consume a greater share of the total acquisitions budget in the future [6]. For example, Elsevier’s journal, Brain Research, in one year, rose in price from $2,871 to $3,826.’ A 32 percent jump in price without prior warning would be hard for any library to absorb without having to cancel other orders. As a consequence of this financial squeeze, collection development staff are often forced to cancel serial subscriptions, or to forgo buying one or more monographs, in order to acquire a new serial title [8]. To do so, they often have to interrupt the regular work flow and take time usually spent making acquisitions decisions to make deselection decisions. At many libraries, revising approval plans and standing order profiles placed with jobbers is no longer a once a year event. Consequently, the lack of warning regarding price increases not only throws off projected budgets and skews the bookkeeping required to track obligated funds, but also creates extraordinary time management problems. One librarian commented that the combination of a price increase with no prior warning adds insult to injury. This sense of frustration prompted another librarian to say that she objects more to the uncertainty then to the price rise. In managing change, prior warning is paramount. These pressures, which are triggering acquisition and deselection choices, are not limited to forcing trade-offs among serial titles or between serials and monographs. The complexity of selection is compounded daily as information becomes available in a variety of electronic formats. Some of these formats are complements to the print materials, while others are supplements, and still others are substitutes. The array of formats used in parallel publishing is both bewildering and exciting. The appearance of CD-ROM, for example, presents new opportunities as well as new problems [9]. Online searching has already become an integral part of the information tool kit for both collection development and reference staff. The industry has expanded enormously in the last fifteen years. It is now a multi-billion dollar a year industry which produces nearly five thousand publicly accessible data bases [lo]. Not surprisingly, an increasing percentage of library acquisitions funds are being allocated to underwriting the costs of online searching. Furthermore, online searching has altered the way in which reference librarians can present information to clients. Information available online, or on CD-ROM, allows library staff to customize and package information in new ways as they respond to client demand. The dynamic nature of these electronic formats also presents policy decisions for collection development and reference staff. In effect, librarians become publishers as they sift and filter infor-
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mation generated electronically and package it in a “published” format for use by the client. Deciding how much of the acquisition budget to allocate to online searching adds yet another management problem to the constellation and another element of uncertainty to projecting costs. If libraries had R&D funds which were separable from the acquisitions budget, and library staff could set aside time from their regular duties for testing and introducing new technologies, the stress on collection development staff and on the acquisitions budget might be more manageable. Regrettably, few libraries have the luxury of this approach. Consequently, while these electronic formats represent an exciting opportunity, they also severely tax library budgets and staff. No doubt, sorting out the old and new formats will become easier as review media catch up and as staff become more familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of new hardware and software. Predicting costs usually becomes easier over time, as in the case of online searching, although the unexpected rises in journal prices shake one’s faith in our ability to make cost projections. At present, however, collection development staff must spend time not only reviewing the content and coverage of each prospective item, but also deciding whether to buy an item in print form, machine-readable form, or both. For example, according to Jean Loup of the Document Center at the University of Michigan Library, the Federal Register can now be obtained in paper, microfiche, CD-ROM, and online [l 11. Michigan currently receives the paper copy of the Federal Register free because it is a selective depository. Ms. Loup says that if they were to be charged for the hard copy in the future, Michigan would pay the annual $300 subscription fee and still continue to buy the silver halide fiche from the Congressional Information Service (CIS) at $405 per year for archival purposes. In addition, Michigan buys the separately published index to the Federal Register, which is also published by CIS, at an annual cost of $640 per year. Not long ago, Michigan also bought the CD-ROM version for $795 from Video Laser Systems in Toledo, Ohio, in order to be able to search key words on a current version which is user-friendly and offers additional access points to their users [12]. Adding all this up, Michigan currently spends $1,840 on the Federal Register, exclusive of the hardware costs of the CD-ROM player. Add to that the cost of the hard copy, assuming that the government did charge Michigan, and the total would come to $2,140. And that is exclusive of subscribing to Federal Register Abstracts, which is available from Dialog at $75 per connect hour with a $9 per hour telecommunication charge and 20 cents per full record printed off-line, or buying an unlimited yearly subscription to the Federal Register Service, offered by Legi-Slate for $6,500 a year per password [13]. A library purchasing all the print and fiche items listed above, and using ten hours search time on Dialog with five hundred offline citations along with a subscription to Legi-Slate’s service, could spend an additional $7,440, for a grand total approaching $10,000 for access to one title in several formats. As if embracing the new technologies and trying to slice the budget to accommodate both print and electronic media are not challenge enough, many collection development staff have also been saddled with the monumental problems and associated costs of dealing with preserving the collection. The only positive thing to say about preservation is that it is an issue facing all libraries with collections of.any size. It is really a collective problem, as are escalating journal prices and the impact of electronic media on acquisitions budgets. Organizations such as the Research Libraries Group and the Association of Research Libraries are working with their respective members to tackle the problems collectively, an appropriate strategy for deal ing with expensive and complex problems.
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Indeed, cooperative strategic planning is a smart way to manage change of this magnitude. As part of this approach, the library community needs to send clear and coordinated signals to the marketplace, which in this case is the publishing industry. For example, it cannot make economic sense for publishers to produce books on acidic paper and then have libraries pay a fortune to deacidify them. It should be possible for libraries, collectively, to work out a way to send an effective market signal to publishers about the need to produce archival quality publications. The first and most basic step in strategic planning is to determine the principal business of a given organization. While this may sound obvious, organizations often misunderstand what business they are in or misread the market. Libraries and publishers (trade and scholarly) are closely linked and, in many ways, serve similar functions. Both are in the information management business or, as Ken Ring of EDUCOM calls it, the knowledge management business. Both package and disseminate information, and both devote significant manpower resources to selection. Selection is just another term for making choices. Collection development staff have to choose what to buy, and publishers have to decide what to publish. Publishers are as actively engaged in selection as are their counterparts in libraries. They have to decide what to publish, what formats to select, and when to reprint, remainder, or pulp. Should they publish journals or monographs? Should they publish a title in a conventional format, such as print or microform, or in one of the dynamic formats, such as CD-ROM or online, or in more than one format? Many publishers are struggling with these decisions without fully understanding the implications for their internal operations, their product lines, and ultimately the cumulative effect on their marketplace. Vannevar Bush’s exhortation to focus on selection appeared over forty years ago in The Atlantic Monthly: Publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. . . . A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted. . . . The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed [14].
So everyone up and down the line, from publisher to library to user, is involved in selection. The danger of failing to make the right selection decisions can be deadly. In the opinion of John P. Dessauer, trade publishing is so out of touch with its market that he believes it is dying [15]. He contends that 80 percent of trade titles consistently fail because of two “suicidal shortcomings,” which are “. . . the inability of publishers to market their wares, and their self-imposed isolation from their readers”[l6]. If this is the case, then all the more reason why librarians, as a group, must find ways to have both trade and scholarly publishers listen to their concerns about issues such as the impact of parallel publishing on budgets and the effect that serial prices have on overall library buying power. Libraries represent a significant portion of their total market. Rather than view publishers as adversaries, it would be far more productive if the library community were to work together with publishers and help them to understand their market better. It is just possible that if librarians and publishers engage in strategic phtnmng, both separately and together, and if publishers pay closer attention to market signals generated by librarians, then the dust might begin to settle and the climate improve. No matter how each chooses to proceed, it is a given that both collection development staff and publishers must continue to make choices. Making choices seems to be part of the human condition. And failing to choose simply results in having others make the choices for us. Victor Fuchs, a professor at both the medical school and the economics department at Stan-
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ford University, presents three fundamental observations about the world which drive choice: resources are scarce in relation to human wants; resources have alternative uses; and people have different wants, with significant variation in the relative importance they attach to them [17]. Many of us in the library world have what Fuchs characterizes as the romantic view. We want it all. “The romantic is misled into confusing the real world with the Garden of Eden. Because it denies the inevitabilityof choice, the romantic point of view is impotent to deal with the basic economic problems that face every society.“[ 181 Furthermore, we are not only romantics but we also fit Fuchs description of taking the authoritarian view. We talk about what people need or should have, yet we have a hard time coming to grips with scarcity and finite resources. What parts of the publishing process are valued by those involved in collection development? I suspect that what collection development staff value highly is the quality control which publishers traditionally provide, Quality control pertains more to the contents of a publication than to its packaging. Whether the title is conventionally published via print or is dynamically published using new technologies such as CD-ROM, collection development staff expect publishers to exercise editorial control and manage the production process. Electronic publishing has not reduced the need for highly trained staff to perform these functions. Assuming that quality control of the content is of paramount concern to the library community, it is a given that the end product is costly. In the past, the physical quality of the publication provided an indication of the quality of the contents. A welldesigned book signalled a parallel investment in refereeing, rewriting, and editing. With the advent of desktop publishing, the link between look and content is removed. It is now far easier and cheaper to make a publication look professional. On the other hand, online access and electronic publishing provide new modes of delivering information which do not depend on packaging or traditional distribution outlets such as bookstores. Again, the links between packaging, delivery mode, and content are broken. It is important that both publishers and libraries recognize the implications of this new environment. Libraries need quality control and publishers still need to provide selection and editorial services. But libraries need to understand that these services are.no cheaper, even though it is far cheaper now to produce and duplicate the resulting product. Libraries are now using techniques such as cooperative collection development and are relying on new delivery mechanisms for resource sharing. While the use of new technology is commendable, it may not reduce costs. For example, if libraries successfully share scholarly journals, then journal sales will fall. In this case, unit prices will have to rise as publishers are forced to spread the same editorial costs over shorter runs. The net effect may be to increase rather than reduce the costs to libraries and publishers collectively of producing and disseminating high-quality journals. The changes in the publishing environment have led to confusion about the definition of publishing. On-demand publishing is really on-demand printing. Similarly, desk-top publishing is another misnomer. It is desk-top composing, not publishing. Yet another example is provided by electronic bulletin boards, which some describe as a new form of publishing. Such bulletin boards provide a new forum for communication-an electronic party line but, given the absence of editorial control, do not fit our definition of publishing. Publishing provides highly refined filters for quality control and provides the same services today as it always has. Publishers are still in the business of working with authors, selecting what should be published (often relying on time-consuming peer review), and deciding how much effort to invest in producing a good, readable product. Don’t confuse the media with the message. In conclusion, there are some steps that can be taken to understand and manage change
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in the evolving technological environment, First, it is important for libraries to shift from crisis management to strategic planning. They should seek areas of cooperation and dialogue, both with other libraries and with the publishing industry. Both sides of the market need to think about the long-term implications of the changes now underway. Second, there is a real need for applied research and development. It is expensive for publishers and libraries to experiment with new technologies, and it is extremely expensive for both to go down the wrong route. Libraries do not have venture capital or R&D funds. There is an opportunity here for government to play a role. Government could provide funds for demonstration grants which allow libraries and publishers to work together to experiment with new technology. Third, there is a continuing need to develop standards. Standardization reduces costs. For example, the collaboration between Sony and Philips to define a compact disc standard was essential in bringing the product to market. Compare this success with the current chaos in the CD-ROM market. Finally, it is very important to improve communication between publishers and the library community. Take a publisher out to lunch. Or better yet, invite one to take you out to lunch!
NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. 2.
3.
4.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
10.
11. 12.
Onlinesearchingand the use of electronic information resources is just as much a part of the collection today as titles in paper and in microform. In lieu of taking such steps, ARL has commissioned a study on the economics of serials publishing in order to understand better what factors are driving costs and whether, in fact, gouging is occurring. The study is now being conducted by a firm which specializes in economic consulting. For more of a flavor of the tenor of the discussions on this subject, see American Libraries, 4 (April 1988). 328. At the risk of fanning the anger of some librarians, I will mention that a representative of a major trade asso& ation representing the paper industry said to me, only half in jest, that I should be grateful for paper which selfdestructs. Given the peremrial space problems in libraries, having the collection reduced to dust means more room on the ranges! One suspects that a major motivation for the creation of new journals is the pressure on academics to publish in order to get tenure. Consequently, new journals are established to provide more outlets for academic publishing. Some publishers are critical of librarians for not being able to determine the relative value of these twigged journals. Constance Holden. “Libraries Stunned by Journal Prices Increases,” Science 236 (May 22, 1987), 908-9. Foreign journals account for 40 percent of LSU’s serial titles and 60 percent of the cost. Ibid., 908. Ibid. This approach might be called the “weed one to seed one” approach. At present, the problems include lack of standardization of the hardware; the relatively high set-up costs; the updating limitations of the format; as well as the still unknown archival problems. Evidently, CD disks are not as rugged as they are touted to be. A faculty member at the library school at Catholic University of America reported in a casual conversation that disks have developed a green mold in a library in Germany. In the Directoty of Online Data Ba.ws, volume 9, number 3, authored and published by Cuadra/Elsevier (July 1988). 3,893 data bases produced by 1723 data base producers are listed. The number of bibliographic, full text, numeric, and directory data bases is still increasing rapidly. Carlos Cuadra, at the national Online Meet@ this year, reported that there are now 4,700 publicly available data bases (See IMormufion To&, June 1988, 1). A Memorandum from Jean Loup to Jaia Barrett of the Association of Research Libraries, via electronic mail, April 16, 1987. Ms. Loup cautions that, in addition to the $795/year cost of the disk from Video Laser Systems in Toledo.software costs $595 and that the disk player costs $995. Given the lack of standardization in CD-ROM hardware, even a library which owns CD-ROM players might have to invest in a chip or board to make its existing UBdPment compatible, or be forced to buy new equipment.
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13. The Federal Register Service provides 14 access points for searching as well as the ability for each subscriber to create a personalized “current awareness” profile for automatically tracking selected topics. 14. Scattered quotes from Vannevar Bush, “AS We May Think,” in CD ROM The New Papyrus: The Current and Future State of the Art. Editedby Steve Lambert and Suzanne Ropiequet, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1986, 4-5, 12. 15. John P. Dessauer, “Perspectives: Editorial Isolation,” in The ABC Forum, August-September 1987, 3. 16. Ibid. 17. Victor R. Fuchs, Who Shall Live? Health, Economics, and Social Choice. New York: Basic Books, 1974,4-5. 18. Ibid.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
ON ELECTRONIC
PUBLISHING
Compiled by Barbara M. Robinson with assistance from the staff of the College of Library and Information Services Library (CLIS) University of Maryland Monographs and Bibliographies on Electronic Publishing: Baumgarten, Jon A. Electronic h Software Publishing: Law, Technology, and Business. New York: Law & Business, Inc., 1984. Dowlin, Ken E. The Electronic Library. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1984. Gorman, Michael, ed. Crossroads. Proceedings of the First National Conference of the Library and Information Technology Association, September 17-21, 1983. Chicago: American Library Association, 1984. Greenberger, Martin. Electronic Publishing Plus. White Plains, New York: Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc., 1985. Gurnsey, John. Electronic Document Delivery-III: Electronic Publishing Trends in the United States and Europe. Oxford: Learned Information, 1982. Gurnsey, John. The Information Professions in the Electronic Age. London: Clive Bingley, 1985. Helal, Ahmed H. and Weiss, Joachim W., eds. New Trends in Electronic Publishing and Electronic Libraries. Essen: Essen University Library, 1984. Hills, Philip J. Trends in Information Transfer. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982. Langlois, Ethel G. Scholarly Publishing in an Era of Change: Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting, Society for Scholarly Publishing, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2-4, 1980. Washington, D.C.: Society for Scholarly Publishing, 1981. Lowry, Anita and Stuveras, Junko, compilers. Scholarship in the Electronic Age: A Selected Bibliography on Research and Communication in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library Resources, February 1987. Moran, Barbara. Academic Libraries: The Changing Knowledge Centers of Colleges and Universities. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Research Report No. 8. Washington, D.C.: Association for the Study of Higher Education, 1984. Network Advisory Committee. Intellectual Property Rights In An Electronic Age: Proceedings of the Network Advisory Committee of the Library of Congress, April 22-24,1987. Washington, D.C.: Network Advisory Committee of the Library of Congress. (Forthcoming)
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Neustadt, Richard M. The Birth of Electronic Publishing: Legal and Economic Issues in Telephone, Cable and Over-the-Air Teletext and Videotext. White Plains, New York: Knowledge Industry Publications,. Inc., 1985. Office of Arts and Libraries. Working Group on Electronic Publishing. “The Impact of Electronic Publishing.” Electronic Publishing Review 3 (December 1983): 281-302. “Review of Comments.” Electronic Publishing Review 4 (December 1984): 289-298. Office of Technology Assessment. Intellectual Property Rights in an Age of Electronics and Information Communication. Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress OTA-CIT 302. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, April 1986. SKP Associates. The Future of the Book. Part II, New Technologies in Book Distribution: The United States Experience. A report prepared for the Center for the Book, Library of Congress. Paris: UNESCO, 1984. Spigai, Fran and Sommer, Peter. Guide to Electronic Publishing: Opportunities in Online and Viewdata Services. White Plains, New York: Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc., 1982. Some Journals Covering Electronic Publishing: Drexel Library Quarterly; Electronic Publishing Business; Electronic and Optical Publishing Review (formerly Electronic Publishing Review); Library Association Record; Microcomputers in Information Management ; Online; Optical Information Systems (formerly Videodisc and Optical Disk Magazine); Publisher’s Weekly; Reference Librarian ; Scholarly Publishing; Serials Review; and Special Libraries. Some Journal Articles on Electronic Publishing: Anderson, Barbara E. “Reading Reference Using Online Databases.” The Reference Librarian 15 (Fall 1986): 225-235. Auld, Larry. “Reader Interaction with the Online Journal.” Serials Review 12 (Summer/Fall 1986): 83-85. Baumol, William J., and Sue Anne Batey Blackman. “Electronics, the Cost Disease, and the Operation of Libraries.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 34 (May 1983): 181-191. Bowyer, Neil. “Electronic Publishing: 10 Questions and Answers.” New Library World 86 (June 1985): 107-8. Butler, Brett. “Scholarly Journals, Electronic Publishing, and Library Networks: From 1986 to 2000.” Serials Review 12 (Summer/Fall 1986): 47-52. Collier, Harry R. “Learned Information’s Electronic Magazine: A Case Study.” Serials Review 12 (Summer/Fall 1986): 69-82. Cronin, Blaise and John Martyn. “Public/Private Sector Interaction: A Review of Issues with Particular Reference to Document Delivery and Electronic Publishing. Aslib Proceedings 36 (October 1984): 373-391.
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Dougherty, Richard M. and Wendy P. Lougee. “What Will SURVIVE?” Library Journal 110 (February 1, 1985): 41-44. Lancaster, F.W., Laura S. Drasgow, and Ellen B. Marks. “The Changing Face of the Library: A Look at Libraries and Librarians in the Year 2001.” Collection Management 3 (Spring 1979): 55-77. Tarter, Blodwen. “Information Liability: New Interpretations for Electronic Publishing.” Online 61 (September 1986): 54-60. Manuals Related to Electronic Publishing: Association of American Publishers. Author’s Guide, volume I; Reference Manual on Electronic Manuscript Preparation and Markup, volume II; Markup of Mathematical Formulas, volume III; and Markup of Tabular Material, volume IV. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Publishers, 1986. (On order). Gordon, Michael. Running a Refereeing System. Leicester, England: Primary Communications Research Centre, University of Leicester, 1983. Grout, Bill. Desktop Publishing from A to Z. Berkeley, California: Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1986. (McKeldin only). Roth, Stephen F. The Computer Edge: Microcomputer Trends/Uses in Publishing. New York, R.R. Bowker Company, 1985. Rosenau, Fred S. and Chase, Leslie R. So You Want To Be A Profitable Database Publisher. Washington, D.C.: The Information Industry Association, 1983. University of Chicago Press. Chicago Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts: For Authors and Publishers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.