Some views from a member of an important customer group

The Culture of Free: Publishing in an Era of Changing Expectations

Christina K. PikasLibrarianJHU/APL*

February 3, 2010

*All opinions strictly my own and are not those of JHU or APL

Who am I & why am I here?

• Practicing librarian at a research lab that is a division of a major research university– Collections budget ~$15M*

• Doctoral student in information studies – interested in scholarly communication

• I have a pragmatic view/approach• I get very frustrated

*ARL Total Materials Expenditures, 2008

• Pain points(things we don’t want to pay for)

• Areas requiring special attention(tread carefully)

• Things that are worth their money

Pain…

DRM that doesn’t let the users do what they expect to be able to do with a book

DRM that doesn’t let us do what we paid for

One pdf per page

Requiring users to follow links in pdf to navigate to other chapters

Using some port other than 80

Pain…

(do note: these are absolutely non-compliant with modern information security settings found in corporations and government)

Non-functioning interfaces

Those that make it impossible to find even a known item with a full, correct citation (why bother subscribing?)

Pain…

Sites that sell their document delivery even when the library has purchased a license, and the site has already identified the user as one who has access via library license

Pain…

When you spend the money we gave you to pay for expensive lobbyists to work against things we hold dear

Pain…

Advertising.

Ok: scientists and engineers miss the ads for equipment and services they used to find in their print journals

Not ok: irrelevant pseudoscientific or gross ad network ads

Attention required…

Confusing combinations of purchase/subscribe

Ok: both are available

Not ok: volumes 1-10, one time purchase, volumes 10-11 subscribe, volumes 12-21 either….

Attention required…

File formatsOk: pdf and html

Iffy: only pdf or only html

Not Ok: pdf that is not OCRd and is locked down so it can’t be OCRd or is of very poor quality

Attention required…

Worth paying for…

Integration with discovery services- Meta searchable- MARC records- Indexed by Google

A decent interface that facilitates- Citation chaining- Exporting references - Finding related content- Incorporation into workflows

Worth paying for…

Final notes

• I see you as partners, do you see me as evil? We are in this together.

• Please ask us – use your library advisory board!

• Don’t reinvent the wheel – look at what your competitors (in and outside of publishing) are doing!

Christina K. Pikaschristina dot pikas at jhuapl.eduBlogging at:http://scienceblogs.com/christinaslisrant