NYSHEI News

The Rakow Research Library of the Corning Museum of Glass has joined NYSHEI.

“We are thrilled to welcome our newest member.  The Corning Museum of Glass is a renowned institution that helps NYSHEI maintain its diverse membership and bolsters our commitment to New York State innovation in all its many forms,” said Jason Kramer, NYSHEI Executive Director.

Library Director Diane Dolbashian made the decision to stand with NYSHEI after learning out NYSHEI’s efforts to raise the profile of all academic and research libraries.  Ms. Dolbashian believes – as does NYSHEI – that a robust information infrastructure is at the heart of all efforts to improve innovation, entrepreneurialism and opportunity for all New Yorkers.

The Juliette K. and Leonard S. Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass is the world’s foremost library on the art and history of glass and glassmaking. Its mission is to acquire everything published on the subject of glass, in every format and in every language.

Scope of the Collection

The Library’s collection includes publications in more than 40 languages, and half of its books and periodicals are in languages other than English. These holdings range in date from a 12th-century manuscript to the latest biographies of contemporary glass artists. The collection contains approximately:

• 55,000 monographs
• 850 active periodical subscriptions
• 27,000 auction sale and trade catalogs
• 21,000 titles in microform
• 230,000 slides
• 2,600 video and DVD titles
• 3,500 linear feet of archival collections
• 3,000 miscellaneous ephemera files
• 100,000 digital files, including more than 100 virtual books
• Publications in more than 40 languages
• Several thousand drawings, prints, photographs, posters, and designs

The Library’s holdings also include personal and corporate archives and manuscripts, as well as sound recordings, postage stamps, calendars, and other glass-related resources.

July 4, 2010

Canadian University Hopes to Lead Fight Against High Subscription Prices

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are going to read this article please also read this: http://researchknowledge.ca/en/news/documents/CRKNOpenLettertoChronicleofHigherEducation12Jul10.pdf.  And continue to the comment at the end of the article.

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Mark Leggott, a librarian at the University of Prince Edward Island, has proposed a “Wikipedia-type index to scholarly literature” called Knowledge for All.

By Jennifer Howard

Famous for mussels, serenity, and as the setting for Anne of Green Gables, Prince Edward Island, the smallest of Canada’s provinces, seems an unlikely hotbed of revolution. But at the University of Prince Edward Island, the province’s only university, a bit of scholarly-communication revolt is stirring.

On June 15, the university librarian, Mark Leggott, released a campus letter to let the faculty know the institution would not be renewing its subscription to the Web of Science database. Mr. Leggott’s letter cited several reasons for the decision: “a challenging fiscal climate,” a required three-year contract with price increases every year, a weaker Canadian dollar that would make those increases even harder to bear.

But here are the real fighting words: “Any subscription increase in these challenging times is difficult, but an increase of 120 percent is simply not acceptable,” Mr. Leggott wrote. “Accommodating this level of increase lends credence to the vendors’ business practices, and we felt it important to make a stand against these practices.” Tellingly, the letter cites the recent standoff between the University of California system and the Nature Publishing Group over journal prices.

Published by Thomson Reuters, Web of Science is a citation index that covers more than 10,000 scholarly journals across a variety of disciplines. It allows users to track what’s been cited and how often. Its multiple databases include conference proceedings and open-access journals, too. In the eyes of Mr. Leggott, it’s also an overpriced product of a scholarly publishing system that no longer works. That’s what he told me when I asked why the university wasn’t going to renew.

“We just said enough is enough,” he said. “These citation indexes are just not special any more, and we’re in a period where financial challenges plus lack of innovation in the [publishing] industry are causing people to say, This just doesn’t make sense anymore.”

He called it “absolutely critical” that research institutions be franker about their dealings with publishers and their pricing models. That applies to small universities like his as well as to enormous systems like California’s.

“We have a tendency to keep our negotiations confidential and quiet, and I think it’s the most egregious process we can follow,” Mr. Leggott told me. “We have been silent for way too long in letting it be known that this kind of scholarly publishing process is not sustainable.”

So a small Canadian university decides to give a citation index the heave-ho. So what? For one thing, observers nowhere near Prince Edward Island took note of the decision. For instance, the Law Librarian Blog saluted UPEI along with the California system for using their run-ins with publishers to make faculty members aware of how the traditional publishing ecosystem really works—and what it costs. “Most people outside of the librarians and deans do not really ‘get’ the price thing as it relates to scholarship,” the blog observed. “Now they do, at least at UC and UPEI.”

As the Law Librarian Blog pointed out, UPEI has done more than just cancel one subscription, and that makes its decision worth keeping tabs on. Mr. Leggott and the library staff took another practical and immediate step: They put together a guide of databases that provide the kind of citation-reference searching that Web of Science does. (The university will acquire a pay-as-you-go license to Web of Science for faculty members who really can’t find a good alternative.)

Another gambit is far more ambitious. Mr. Leggott sees the Web of Science decision as an opportunity “to raise awareness around all these issues and see if there’s any interest in building a different kind of approach.” What he has in mind is “a Wikipedia-type index to scholarly literature” called Knowledge for All. Open source and freely available, the index would be built and maintained by libraries—not just UPEI’s but as many as are willing to pitch in.

Mr. Leggott envisions Knowledge for All as an index built “using the elbow grease of the institution rather than the increasingly dwindling resources we have,” he told me. “The goal here would be to index all of what can be identified as scholarly, whether it’s peer reviewed or not peer reviewed.”

Mr. Leggott is circulating the proposal to library consortia in Canada and abroad, hoping to get 10 to 20 institutions to sign on as founding members to hire a project manager and get the project in gear. It could mean only a modest outlay of money and staff time for participating institutions. The librarian estimates that there are some 40,000 science journals published every year; if 3,000 libraries pitched in, he calculates, “then each of them would have to index 15 journal titles.” Instead of paying money to commercial publishers for products such as Web of Science, libraries could put their resources to work indexing the scholarly literature themselves.

Mr. Leggott says his job now is to convince other librarians that the idea has legs. His message: “Rather than paying into a dysfunctional scholarly-publishing environment, the library community should take the lead and make sure that knowledge that’s created largely by scholarly communities is not locked behind a pay wall.”

Whatever happens with the Knowledge for All project, it will be interesting to see whether UPEI’s decision to ditch one of its standard databases will embolden librarians elsewhere to take similar measures. We’re still waiting for one side or the other to blink in the California-Nature standoff, and what happens there will surely have a ripple effect. A big system like California’s, with its combined research heft, has a decent chance of getting publishers to pay attention. Will publishers and other libraries sit up and take notice when a small university like UPEI says it’s had enough?

Content providers may not care that much—if the action is limited to one small customer. Mr. Leggott says he has heard very little from Web of Science, and no details on how it will make sure that UPEI has access to Web of Science materials it has already paid for. “There seems to be little time or concern for a little institution like UPEI,” Mr. Leggott told me.

But if UPEI can get enough other institutions to make Knowledge for All a serious experiment—or if it helps inspire other colleges and universities to take their own stands with publishers—its influence could exceed its size.

“A small university can have a big impact when there’s a little bit of vision there,” Mr. Leggott said.

While it may feel as if we entered the Twilight Zone, we are still in New York (see map).

In an attempt to answer your many questions about the status of the state budget, I assembled a number of quotes directly from the policy makers engaged in the budget process.  I hope this helps.

“We have finished the business of the Session,” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

“I’m just stunned that it’s even being insinuated that this is the end of session.  It’s just the most amazing moment I think I’ve ever had sitting here in on the floor of the Senate chamber,” Senator Dean Skelos.

“We have done our job; we have done the budget,” Senate President John Sampson, who quickly added, “we have an outstanding piece – the revenue plan.”

“Folks in the Senate are going to go home and won’t be back until there’s a deal,” Senator Antoine Thompson.

“I’m not negotiating with anybody,” Governor David Paterson.

“Like E.T., I want to go home.  I want to get paid,” Assemblyman Jose Rivera.

“We should not be leaving Albany.  We should be completing the budget,” Senator Steve Saland.

“All in all, [the budget] is a mess.  The entire budget scenario is a disgrace and an outrage,” Senator Frank Padavan.

“I’m not talking to them ever!” Governor David Paterson.

“In the face of fiscal uncertainty, New Yorkers need action.  Stay in Albany and get the job done,” State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.

“We never got to discuss the budget.  The process has to change.  This is a bad course that Albany once again is going down,” Senator Joseph Addabbo.

“If this were a reality show it would have been canceled after one week and not allowed to run on for three months,” Assemblyman Jim Tedisco.

“There is still work to be done,” Senator Kevin Parker.

“It’s possible that we may have a $1 billion hole,” Senate President John Sampson.

“In one of the most irresponsible and shameful moves ever seen in Albany, [they] decided to adjourn rather than finishing the state budget,” Senator Cathy Young.

“We are staying today and we are leaving.  We will pass everything that we have to pass to have a balanced budget and we are completing our work,… and we will be leaving.  I don’t know what the senate plan is, I have not yet spoken to Sampson,” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

“See you… whenever,” Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, while leaving Albany July 1.

I hope that helps clarify the situation.

The NYSHEI Annual Meeting was a success.

Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak (pictured left), Chair of the Assembly Task Force on University-Industry Cooperation, kicked off the day by emphasizing the role of libraries in supporting innovation and workforce development.

The record number of registrants reacted with enthusiasm to Keynote Speaker Martin Babinec, President of Upstate Venture Connect.  Babinec, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who returned to his New York roots in establishing UVC, set the theme of the day when he asked why, with its leading higher education sector, New York lagged in generating the ventures that would lead us through the 21st century.

During a panel anchored by Margaret Moree of the Business Council of New York State and Brian McMahon of the New York State Economic Development Council, the NYSHEI membership got a chance to understand the needs of small businesses and explore what academic libraries could do to foster better collaboration with these entrepreneurs.

Finally, the day was capped by Janet McCue, Associate University Librarian at Cornell, who spoke about Cornell’s efforts to have its library reach into the local and global community, serving as a valued partner for campus researchers, and supporters outside the Cornell grounds.

Take the time to peruse these 21 essays on the future of academic librarianship – especially the ones written by NYSHEI member institution leaders.

Compiled by Neal-Schuman Publishers, these essays explore many aspects of academic librarianship in changing times.