File-sharing: not just for kids

I'm still wrapping my head around this; it's a report about a bunch of medical professionals setting up a file-sharing forum for articles from non-open access (NOA) journals. Techdirt reports that the site had 100,000 users and that 83% of requested articles were shared—over 5000 articles in a 6-month period. I went to look at the original report and saw a lot of talk about OA vs. NOA journals, but, interestingly, no discussion of institutional repositories. I would love to see an analysis of how many of those articles, despite being published in NOA journals, were freely available online, to begin with.

More broadly, though, this seems like some sort of failure, on some level, by someone. Does the blame fall on publishers for charging too much? (Unsurprisingly, I'm inclined to suggest that's a piece of the problem, yes. The study gives the average "value"—I'm going to use the term "cost," instead—of an article as $30. Seems a bit steep, to me, given that the writing and editing were done for free, from the publisher's standpoint.) Does the fault lie with libraries for failing to make interlibrary loan into a faster, better-used, better-marketed service? Maybe, but, then again, with this kind of volume, mightn't libraries be running into cost and copyright pitfalls, anyway? I'll show some ignorance, here: perhaps public libraries don't offer article-level ILLs; I admit, I've never tried. On the other hand, it's hard to say how many of these researchers already had access to academic or medical libraries that could get these articles for them and opted to go this route, anyway; I would assume a very small percentage, but what if I'm wrong? Do we blame institutions—and, yeah, academic libraries—for failing to build repositories of their scholars' works? Maybe, a little, but a fair portion of the publishers in the biomedical fields seem (by my unscientific sampling) to insist on pre-print only archiving, as well as 6-month to 1-year embargoes. That's a non-ideal scenario, even with 100% participation in institutional repositories, which is, itself, a pipe dream.

I thought this quote, from the original study, was pretty fascinating: "From the participants’ comments made in the forums, however, there does not appear to be any vindictiveness on the part of the participants against the journals or holders of copyright, but a mood of togetherness, of openness and sharing, and communal assistance." So, scientists acting like scientists are supposed to, sharing information freely? The devil, you say!

I don't have any new solutions to offer—that I think social networking tools could make some of this discussion moot is probably no secret [though it may be worth its own post, later in the week]—so perhaps I shouldn't go so far as to say this: journal publishers are now, more and more obviously, getting in the way of scientific progress. Perhaps not as directly as stupid intellectual property policies—companies owning genes and chemical formulas and the like—but, certainly, it's happening. Scientific discussion should be open and accessible, and as libraries struggle with decreasing budgets, while publishers increase the price of journals, that discussion is getting more and more closed, forcing researchers to, in this case, build their own file-sharing networks, to get the information they need. This is a pressing issue for the library, scientific, and academic communities—which, I realize, overlap significantly, though I would argue that sometimes scientists-as-scientists are open to different solutions than scientists-as-academics: the bulk of my favored options require some changes in the tenure system, for instance.

At any rate, have a look at that study, and tell me what you think in the comments. (Maybe one day I'll get Google Wave working with this blog, and we can chat about all of this in real-time.)

FLIPpity doo dah

I'm fortunate enough to work in a library that has a pretty active new-, future-, and experienced-but-interested-in-new-librarians' issues group (was that a parallelism win or fail? who can say?), Future Librarians and Information science Professionals, or FLIP, which was definitely one of the things that I found attractive about the job, when I interviewed. I just attended my first meeting today, where we talked about one member's move into a new job on campus—it sounds like a great opportunity—and how that relates to our library and the campus at large. People also asked how I was settling in, which was nice. And we talked at some length about various library schools' approaches to distance education, the shortage of cataloging professors, and the recent LJ Placements & Salaries Survey results (more analysis and discussion here and, to go ahead and expose my feelings on the matter, here). It was definitely good to have that dedicated time to sit with a group of coworkers I don't necessarily see every day (some I do, some I don't) and discuss issues, both close to home and about the profession at large.

As far as the Salaries & Placements thing goes, I really feel like I've beaten the subject to death, already, though that was based on pre-economic-crash data, which may or may not have been all that compelling. Given LJ's recent findings, I feel validated in my anger (if not in my wording)—though I would honestly rather have been wrong, in this case. My point: the ethical argument for keeping so many library schools open, accepting absurdly high numbers of applicants, and pumping out graduates, when there are so few jobs, continues to elude me. There's the argument that this is just a pendulum swing, that it'll be fine in a few years, but that argument is rarely backed up with any data; meanwhile, libraries are closing and laying off people left and right, filling the marketplace with a bunch of experienced librarians, on top of all the new graduates (and we're supposed to believe they'll be reopening as soon as the economy starts an upswing?); retirement funds aren't exactly up (30 percent losses take a while to fix, even in a great economy); there's a frightening trend toward part-time, rather than full-time, positions; and there continue to be vague potential future threats to the field (which, if one is to believe Tim Spalding, are dire—see his discussion of ebooks today). (Not sure I agree with Mr. Spalding, but there are plenty of very real threats out there, in addition to the possible threat ebooks might pose.) Even if everything does right itself in a few years, what are this year's and next year's and the following year's graduates supposed to do? Why is the survival of 60+ library schools considered more important than the survival of the profession and its newest members? How, I ask again, do the faculty and leadership of these schools live with themselves?

I don't understand the lack of anger. Are we all just so consumed by the business of keeping our libraries running that we don't have time to worry about the 5000+ kids being duped into $30k of debt for, essentially, nothing? (That's assuming 2000 or so do find jobs that pay some portion of their debts—not a wild assumption, but not a given, either.) I get the lack of action—none of these schools will be shutting down or shrinking their program any time soon. That would cut into their bottom line, and schools were hit hard by the economic downturn, too. Library programs are a great source of cash. So, no action, sure—upsetting, but understandable. But why so little outcry?

I got sidetracked. That was going to be half a paragraph. But it turns out the degree-in-hand (or, well, in-the-mail) and the job don't suddenly make me comfortable with my own library school experience, with the general employment rate for new librarians, or with the continuation of the cycle for current and future library students. Who knew.

I feel sort of guilty talking about it, now that I've ranted about the joblessness problem, but my own job really is going well. I've had a cold all week, which kind of set back my learning schedule a bit, but even through the haze of cold medicine, I feel like I'm getting a grip on a lot of the things I need to know, both technically and interpersonally (?). I've got the bulk of the committee I'm supposed to put together, I went to the first meeting of a committee I'm supposed to join (and, truth be told, it's a pretty cool committee—all about eLearning), I have a list of tasks for the next year, I have a huge to-do list (both things given to me and things I came up with and have to run by that first committee I mentioned), I have a plant in my office, and I haven't been stopped when trying to leave through the back door, behind the circulation desk, in over a week. :) In short, this is starting to feel like "my job," rather than, say, someone else's job that I'm just trying to cover.

Back in Library-land

Pittsburgh to Anchorage is a long trip—4202.6 miles, to be precise—and I spent pretty much that whole time and, to be honest, the bulk of my first couple of weeks in Alaska willfully ignorant of what was happening in the library world. I marked my RSS feeds "read," ignored my mailing lists, and did the bare minimum, as far as committee work went—though I have some extra to do, to make up for it, now. But I think that break between the overwhelmingness of a 1.5-year crash course in librarianship (I'm counting my pre-library-school information seeking, too, since I got so very wrapped up in it) and, you know, starting work as a librarian was good for me; I'd recommend it to anybody, financial details aside.

But now I'm back and busier than ever! My first day at work as a librarian was Monday, and although I was too tired to blog about it right away, it was excellent. I've learned quite a lot, both about the place where I work and about the technical details of maintaining and upgrading their (our!) Web presence. It's all been pleasantly overwhelming, if that phrasing makes any sense. There's still so much to learn and so much to be done once I have learned (by which I mean, as I am learning) it. But my department—and, honestly, the library as a whole—is so supportive and helpful and willing to answer questions (and, by and large, good at holding back from opening floodgates of things they need the new Web Services Librarian to do for them :)) that, intimidating as the learning curve is, I feel "challenged," rather than "freaked out" or even "stressed." Although it'll be hard work, I definitely feel up to it.

So, I have to say, on the whole, things are good. It may be a few weeks before I go back to exhorting folks to write to publishers, library school deans, or anyone else. ;) But I'll try to keep updating about my experience in starting out as a librarian, starting my work as a liaison to an academic department (and it does look like it'll be engineering, hopefully electrical and computer!), and starting to take on more and more of the technical stuff related to the website.

Sorry if my spelling is not up to par. The dictionary is clearly not installed with Firefox on my Acer...