Not hanging separately

"I’ve been thinking again about the question asked me at UCLA: why should academic libraries divert staff and budgetary resources to open access (green or gold, gratis or libre) if our mandate is to serve our local patrons? I gave an answer that I wasn’t particularly happy with. I have a bit of an esprit d’escalier answer now, the borrowed words of Benjamin Franklin: 'We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.' ...We also know that toll-access publishers and aggregators have been playing divide-and-conquer for a long time. What are all these NDAs about, if not to divide libraries one from another and prevent us from gathering the collective intelligence that would let us all negotiate fair prices? At this late date, we seem unlikely to reverse this behavior as individual libraries and consortia. It’s going to take a full-court press, from as many of us as possible. Just as open access will...."