Scientists Press For Boost In Federal Library Funding

New committee says paper collections are threatened, but librarians say that the information glut demands new acquisitions strategies A committee of more than 130 scientists from different disciplines--newly organized by a consultant with longstanding ties to several commercial academic publishers- -is calling for more federal funding for research libraries. Increasingly, they say, libraries are failing to keep collections of science books and journals up to date because they lack money for acquisitions. They warn that, in time, the declining accessibility of these materials may threaten their investigations. Librarians and scientific society officials say, however, that the problem of keeping abreast of scientific information is more complicated than the committee and its Bridgeport, Conn.-based consultant organizer, Albert Henderson, would make it appear. They say that part of the acquisitions problem is the rising cost of journals-- especially some of those produced by the commercial academic publishers. In addition, the increasing specialization of science books and journals, which results in ever-larger numbers of publications for ever-smaller readerships, is straining library budgets and facilities, they say. "Mr. Henderson's committee feels that if there were more funding of libraries, then the problem would go away," says Harry Lustig, treasurer of the American Physical Society (APS) in College Park, Md., a nonprofit publisher of scientific journals. "We are certainly in favor of more funding for libraries, more funding for research, and more funding for the dissemination of research. We applaud that, but we do not believe that the problem will go away, because there just isn't that much funding available. The amount of information scientists publish every year is still increasing by large factors--with our journals, it's something like 10 percent a year." Solutions proposed by these groups include more reliance on computer databases and document-delivery systems, more selective acquisitions that may be based partly on a title's price, and more use of interlibrary loans. While they acknowledge that more library funding would be welcome, they do not think it will prove, in the end, to be the best tactic for maintaining top-quality collections. "There's no library in the country that doesn't want more money and couldn't do great things with it," says Ann Okerson, director of the office of scientific and academic publishing for the Association of Research Libraries in Washington, D.C. "On the other hand, I think people in research libraries believe that the cost of science journals is quickly pushing all of our other acquisitions off the map." Even with more money, she says, the sheer volume of new books and journals published each year now demands that libraries develop new acquisitions strategies. "We're doomed in paper," Okerson says. "I don't think we can ever afford, anymore, to house in research libraries in a comprehensive fashion all the publications that researchers generate in paper. Our buildings will collapse." Henderson says the problem is that library acquisitions funding has been declining as a share of university expenditures, resulting in canceled journal subscriptions and fewer book purchases. He does not accept the idea that new technologies and interlibrary loans can substitute for copies on the shelves. "I'm all for the library technologies, for the Internet and for [computer] document delivery," he says. "I love it--when it works." He says, however, that of 11 listed documents he recently ordered through an academic document delivery service, only eight were available. This is not unusual, he says. Interlibrary loans, too, are only as good as the contributing library collections, he says. "You have to have a source," Henderson says. "If you want something by interlibrary loan, that means that somebody has to have it. There has to be a loaner as well as a borrower. As the sources dry up, you find that the failure rate increases." Taken together, he says, efforts to meet researchers' library needs without making adequate new purchases are bound to be insufficient. "This business of the virtual library is just something for nothing," Henderson says. "It's a fraud." The deficit in acquisitions funding can be traced to changes in two main government provisions, he says. One is Title II- A of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which provided federal matching grants for library acquisitions from the mid-1960s to 1980, when the Reagan administration ended this funding, according to Henderson. The other is Circular A-21, the Office of Management and Budget publication covering allowable indirect costs, a shrinking proportion of which, he says, has been used to support libraries. Henderson says the federal government should directly address the question of research library acquisitions in its science policy deliberations. Because of the large number of federally funded academic researchers and because many members of the public use the libraries, he also feels the federal government has a responsibility to provide dedicated funding in this area and not to rely on the discretion of the universities. Some of the scientists who have signed on with Henderson's committee say that they, too, are concerned that, without adequate funding, library collections may rely too heavily on high technology and be unable to properly serve researchers. "I feel threatened by the information highway undermining the accessibility of the finished document, the actual journal, per se, or the book," says committee member Jules Elias, an associate professor of histopathology at State University of New York, Stony Brook. Elias is also editor of the Journal of Histotechnology. "I love my computer, I love my Medline, I love my searches--but I want to be able to hold a journal or a book in my hand." He adds: "The book is still the book. You don't take your computer to bed with you." Research librarians insist that science collections are being well maintained, sometimes, in fact, to the detriment of other types of materials. Science journal price increases as well as the total amounts spent on those journals, they say, have outstripped those in other areas. "We've kept up with that side of the house," says Okerson, "but we've let go all kinds of other stuff--books, mostly in the humanities and social sciences, and other serials--to preserve very, very expensive science serials." She adds: "We're undergoing profound changes in the amount of information that's being published and the specialized nature of it. We now have subdisciplines with one or two hundred interested people. This is not a market." As a result, she says, research librarians are looking to technologies such as the Internet, online databases, and computer publication and distribution systems to supplement ordinary publishing. Some of these might help scientists get materials faster, Okerson says, and some might help meet the needs of more specialized researchers in a more cost- effective way than paper publishing. "Everything is changing so very quickly," Okerson says. "It's not clear to me, and it's not clear to a lot of people, that the mere act of putting more money into the system is going to be what saves the day." Some committee members and others express concern that Henderson's potential consulting relationships with the for- profit journal publishers may influence the direction taken by the committee he has organized. Librarians have, at times, criticized some of these publishers' pricing structures as being excessive and as undermining their ability to maintain comprehensive journal collections. "I myself have had some problems sorting out who is driving the committee," says Palle E.T. Jorgensen, a professor of mathematics at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Jorgensen is also editor of Proceedings of the AMS, from the American Mathematical Society. "Some of what Mr. Henderson says sounds like it's exactly what the scientists and the graduate students who use the science libraries, in fact, want and what we're concerned about. But I was a little bit worried about the committee, maybe, being influenced by some of the concerns of the commercial publishers, whereas I believe that the professional societies have a better way of getting the material to the science libraries for lower cost." Jorgensen says that Henderson included his curriculum vitae with his solicitation, so that his affiliations were clear. "He didn't put it in the headline, but he certainly didn't try to hide it," Jorgensen says. Henderson acknowledges that the purposes of the committee he has created dovetail well with his own interests and, perhaps, those of his current and potential publisher clients. "As a consultant, I need a way to market myself," Henderson says. "Espousing this cause provides me with a reason to talk to all of the major publishers that I may or may not do business with."

Scientists Press For Boost In Federal Library Funding

Feb 20, 1994

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