Rough Seas and the Journal of Academic Librarianship: Differing Opinions by Two Academic Librarians | 2001
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Summary:
"OPINION #1: ROW STRAIGHT AHEAD by Steve McKinzie, Social Science Liaison, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA
When navigating the seas of collection development, you sometimes have to cover your ears to the sirens’ cries from the shore, row straight ahead, and let nothing distract you. It is very much like that now, if you find yourself listening to the shore pleas of some of the profession’s most distinguished voices. The sirens, such as Ray English of Oberlin College and Sue Martin of Georgetown University, are urging librarians to cancel their subscription to one of the library profession’s flagship journals, The Journal of Academic Librarianship. The journal has new owners, Elsevier Publishers, and the sirens implore libraries to drop their subscription and add in its place a soon-to-be-published alternative, Portal: Libraries and the Academy. Librarians, they argue, should set an example to their academic colleagues by being willing to cancel overpriced Elsevier titles in their own academic field of librarianship....
OPINION #2: CHANGE COURSE by Jocelyn Godolphin, Head, Humanities and Social Sciences, Koerner Library, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, jgodol@interchange.ubc.ca
Mr. McKinzie encourages us to row straight ahead and avoid the siren calls from the shore that would encourage us to cancel the Journal of Academic Librarianship since it has been bought by Elsevier. I fear that Mr McKinzie, in his own earnest rowing straight ahead, has not realized that the tide has turned. He is at great risk of being swamped, if he does not rethink the direction his argument is taking him. The turning of the tide was evidenced sometime ago in the appearance of initiatives like SPARC, which demonstrate that libraries can help change scholarly publishing...."
LIBRES: Library and Information Science Research
Electronic Journal ISSN 1058-6768
2001 Volume 11 Issue 1; March 31
Bi-annual LIBRES 11N1