Contents

From the Director

During our final meeting of the last academic year, the Faculty Senate Library Committee, had an excellent discussion about the essay "To Publish and Perish," which was published in the March 1998 issue of Policy Perspectives. The Committee felt this essay raised many critical issues for all faculty and asked me to prepare an executive summary for this Fall issue of Library Update. As it turns out, Mary Case, Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication at the Association of Research Libraries, has already prepared an excellent summary. I reproduce it here, with her permission:

Academic Community Sets Agenda to Reclaim Scholarly Publishing

Research universities have it within their power to work with each other and scholarly societies to transform scholarly communication into "a system of electronically mediated publication that will provide enhanced access to scholarly information and relief from the escalating prices of commercial publishers." So conclude the participants-university presidents, provosts, faculty, librarians, counsels, and representatives of scholarly societies and university presses-in a special Roundtable on Managing Intellectual Property in Higher Education. The findings of this group are reported in the essay "To Publish and Perish" featured in the March, 1998 issue of Policy Perspective, the publication of the Pew Higher Education Roundtable.

Noting that the rising cost of scholarly publications is not a 'library problem,' but a symptom of the deeper conflict between the sociology and economics of academic publishing, the essay contrasts the expectation of an open exchange of information within the academy to the pricing and copyright practices of commercial publishers that control many of the major scholarly publishing venues. In an effort to regain some control over the research and scholarship generated by the academic community, the Roundtable participants proposed a set of five strategies to address the problem. They recommend that:

• promotion and tenure committee disentangle the notions of quality and quantity in the work of the faculty;
  
• libraries leverage their resources by creating a more coherent market for scholarly publications;
  
• universities, led by their national associations, help faculty understand the implications of signing away their intellectual property rights;
  
• universities and scholarly societies invest in electronic forms of peer-reviewed scholarly communication; and
  
• universities and scholarly societies decouple publication and faculty peer reviewed evaluation of the merit of scholarly work.
  
• participants stated that "The outcome we seek is a set of specific arrangements-linking institutions, their faculty, and their scholarly organizations-that protects the rights of faculty and secures for their appointing institutions a more assured ability to provide access to research and scholarly information." While the challenges are not insignificant, the group concluded that: "the risks of doing nothing substantially outweigh the difficulty of doing something-and doing it now! A moment of opportunity is at hand, occasioned by the potential for peer-reviewed electronic publishing and a sense of desperation spawned by runaway acquisition costs. Missing this opportunity will mean more rapidly accelerating costs, greater commercial control, and, in the end, less access to scholarly communication."
  

Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)

• create a more competitive marketplace;
  
• reduce the prices of journals;
  
• ensure fair use and educational and library uses of electronic resources;
  
• apply new technologies to improve the process of scholarly communication and to reduce the costs of production and distribution.
  

• solicit and encourage the introduction of new publications of high quality and fair price;
  
• guarantee a subscription base and market new products to potential subscribers;
  
• provide start-up capital (in selected cases);
  
• generate support for SPARC projects from distinguished faculty, educational organizations, professional societies, and scholarly publishers.
  

Collaborative Project between WSU Libraries and English Department Receives Award

Direct Document Delivery Service Expands to Graduate/Professional Students.

Increased Library Support for WSU's Distance Education Students

• Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences (available since fall 1992; offered through the College of Liberal Arts)
  
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• Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration (available only in certain Washington communities as of spring 1998; offered through the College of Business and Economics)
  
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• Bachelor of Arts in Human Development (available as of fall 1998; offered through the College of Agriculture and Home Economics)
  

MASC: Collections in the Era of New Technologies

UniPrint -- Improved Printing Capability

New GIS Machines Serve a Growing Need

No More Passwords for Database Access!

New Online Access Available

ICNE Library Card Catalog Retires