Resource sharing in the electronic era: potentials and paradoxes - Networked Scholarly Publishing

Library Trends, Spring, 1995 by Gay N. Dannelly

The second issue in this scenario is that of retrospective conversion. Many libraries have not had the resources to carry out a retrospective conversion project, thus limiting the access to their collections. Automation may mean access if a library has carried out a project to support circulation on their local system. Brief records for every item in the circulating collection may exist in an OPAC yet may not be reflected in the utilities. However, with the access to catalogs through the Internet, access can be achieved when a library client is willing to invest the time to check many catalogs to locate one item.

A companion paradox is that acquisition is access if order and in-process records are included in the local OPAC as it is displayed on the Internet. In fact, with the inclusion of automated acquisitions systems in online catalogs, many of the concerns caused by the needs of the utilities and their huge databases can be bypassed by knowledgeable librarians and library patrons who are willing to invest the time and effort to access heretofore invisible materials.

The most disturbing result of this rapid high-tech environment in which many libraries are now living is the contrast between the "haves" and the "have nots." Flanders (1991) has noted that:

social, economic, and geographic barriers have combined to make it difficult for certain people to obtain information. Case in point: the telecommunications infrastructure in rural America is generally barely adequate for voice communications and cannot suport touch-tone service, let alone the advanced data capacity required by NREN. (p. 574)

It is not only the technology that limits accessibility to information resources. We must be very conscious that there is no such thing as free information. Somebody somewhere pays for information. It may be the taxpayer, the patron, the sponsoring research agency, the businessperson, but it has to be supported economically. The issue libraries must face is who pays where? Does the library receive support from its governing body to provide information resources, in any format, to its patrons or does the library have to charge? Or does it consciously decide to charge based on the nature of the materials requested? For example, a university library might decide to charge for online searches of commercial databases but to provide free mediated searches of government produced CD-ROMS. Alternatively, a library might view the value-added nature of a CD-ROM as being an appropriate reason to institute charges, particularly when the library cannot acquire the title and the equipment any other way.

A puzzle in the development of electronic information is that librarians may, by their selection decisions, cause an economic chill in certain areas of traditional publishing by acquiring products only in machine-readable form. Paradoxically, the availability of relatively inexpensive "publication" through listservs or electronic journals could also make more works available than could ever be produced by decreasing publication cost dramatically.