Collections In The Future Will Be Electronic

Three weeks ago I sat in a small room with fellow faculty members at the University of North Carolina who serve with me on the administrative board of our library. At that meeting we voted to cancel 551 journal subscriptions. Over the previous 12 months we had canceled an additional 500 subscriptions as part of our ongoing serial review program. We had little choice. Already stagnant budgets coupled with dramatic increases in subscription prices had cut the number of books we could purchase in a year to half the number we had purchased only eight years before. If we were to continue to purchase books at all, expenditures for journal subscriptions had to be slashed. At our neighboring institution, North Carolina State University, the situation was even more grim, because there a stronger emphasis on science has caused serials to make up a larger portion of the materials budget. Book purchases for the humanities and social sciences could not be reduced sufficiently to make up for the shortfall in funds for scientific journals. Their library has canceled more than 2,000 journal subscriptions in the last 12 months alone. These statistics serve to illustrate the crisis faced by science libraries. There are two component problems to this crisis: where to put it all, and how to pay for it all. The basis for the first is simply that the store of human knowledge is always increasing, so research libraries face a continually increasing need for archival facilities. The ultimate solution to this problem will likely be found in some form of compact, digital storage. The economics and efficiencies of such technologies are too compelling not to be standard for many journals within the near future. Already, preservation and space problems have compelled most libraries to maintain collections of newspapers on microfilm, a technology that has all the disadvantages of digital storage with few of the additional advantages. The second and less tractable problem is one of demographics. The number of researchers in the world has been growing nearly exponentially, and consequently the number of publications has been increasing in a similar fashion. Thus, the typical research library has faced a nearly exponential rate of increase in the material it should collect, even though the library budget and the number of individual researchers that the library services have increased much more slowly. As a consequence, the acquisition costs for servicing the average researcher have steadily increased, and the proportion of the published journals that the typical library can afford to receive has steadily declined. There are three obvious classes of solutions for the library problem: restriction of collection size, acquisition of material on demand, probably on a fee-per-use basis, and adoption of more economical formats for information acquisition and storage. I focus here on the final and least distasteful of these. I recognize two groups of journals - those I can afford to subscribe to, and those to which I will never be able to subscribe. The latter are most often published by for-profit publishers and are priced so that only libraries can afford to subscribe. I have grown to accept the fact that I can read these only in libraries. If expensive research journals were to become available to me at my desk in my office, I would be much happier. I do not like reading from a computer screen any more than I like reading from a microfilm reader. However, if I could access a journal on the screen of my office computer instead of having to walk to the library, I would embrace the new technology in a flash. As I mentioned earlier, the future for archival copies of journals is likely to be some form of electronic storage. Thus, the time seems ripe for conversion of current journals to an electronic format. If a journal were published in an electronic format, there could be quicker publication and distribution, and greater access. Just as important, an electronic format should ultimately result in a major reduction in publication and archival costs. Assuming distribution were in the form of subscription, reduced prices would mean more libraries could afford to subscribe, which might lead to further economies of scale and still further declines in prices. I expect that once conversion to an electronic format starts in earnest, journal publishers will feel tremendous pressure to conform, since it will be the electronic journals that are most accessible to the scholar and, therefore, most popular to publish in. It is easy to imagine that once the trend starts, we will see the great majority of important journals convert in less than a decade. Clearly, I am more optimistic about our ability to switch quickly to electronic formats than are many publishers. They recall experiments such as the one carried out in 1980 by the Geological Society of America, in which that society decided to publish only the abstract for most articles with the text being distributed on microfiche. The result was that authors almost immediately stopped submitting manuscripts and their journal almost died. However, in the case of the electronic journal, conversion will be driven by convenience and greater accessibility, plus the transition can be eased by a per-iod of publication in two forms: electronic and paper. Paper can eventually be phased out for the expensive journals as demand drops, while still being retained for the less expensive journals. A cautionary note should be added, however, pointing out that double-format acquisition during the period of transition could prove very costly. Many details need to be worked out. The method of distribution is negotiable, but I envision libraries continuing to purchase subscriptions with individual articles being delivered to the library computer by electronic mail or a form similar to CD-ROM. Here the temptation to adopt a pay-per-use system must be avoided. Hard copies of individual articles would need to be available from subscribing libraries for a price approximating the cost of photocopies. Software would need to be developed to facilitate browsing tables of contents, abstracts, and articles, as has already been done for various on-line services. Graphics capabilities will need to be standardized and enhanced, especially for journals incorporating high-quality photography. But all of these are details that we should be able to work out. To summarize, I expect conversion to compact, digital media to play a major role in the long-term solution of the "library problem," and I see enhanced access as the catalyst for the conversion. However, what is preventing progress at this time is a lack of leadership. With respect to setting standards, the publishers are waiting for libraries and libraries for the publishers. The speed with which fax machines became an indispensable component of modern communication suggests that once standards are established for electronic distribution and storage of journals, the transition will take place over only a couple of years. On the other hand, in the absence of leadership the electronic journal will probably flounder in much the same way as high-definition television has been floundering in this country. Perhaps AAAS could play a role in providing this critically needed leadership. Robert K. Peet is professor of biology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Collections In The Future Will Be Electronic

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Robert Peet

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April 1990

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