From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 23:45:24 +0000

When I worked for an academic bookseller that provided approval plan
services to libraries, I don't think I knew of any who excluded
revised dissertations from their purchase programs. Most did restrict
UNrevised dissertations, however.

This was 20 years ago, though, so it's possible that restrictions on
revised dissertations were more common than I remember.

Rick Anderson
Interim Dean
J. Willard Marriott Library
University of Utah



On Apr 14, 2013, at 7:02 PM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:20:09 -0500
>
> One of those "different ways" has to do with the revised dissertation,
> Many librarians have ceased including these titles in their approval
> plans because they subscribe to ProQuest's dissertation database.
> Editors know this, so are less eager to publish books based on
> dissertations because they won't sell as well as other monographs.
> Tenure committees, especially in the humanities, continue to expect
> junior scholars to publish one or two books to qualify for career
> advancement.  Each of these actors is making a decision that is
> rational relative to the goals of the particular actor--librarian,
> editor, committee--but as a whole the decisions add up to systemic
> dysfunctionality, or what Fred calls a "tragedy of the commons."
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
>> From: "Friend, Fred" <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 22:00:33 +0000
>>
>> Rick is absolutely right. And another aspect of the different
>> perspectives of librarians and publishers lies in way value for money
>> is measured. In promoting "big deals", multi-volume purchases, or
>> number of hits on databases publishers assume that librarians equate
>> quantity with value for money. For the librarian value is measured by
>> the contribution the content purchased makes to the teaching and
>> research within their institution. Likewise a measure such as a
>> journal impact factor is of importance to a publisher but of little
>> importance to a librarian - and arguably only of importance to an
>> author for research assessment procedures. There is indeed a "tragedy
>> of the commons" resulting from different ways of looking at the world
>> of scholarly communication, some of the different ways being of
>> long-standing while others have grown up as universities and
>> publishing businesses have changed over the years.
>>
>> Fred Friend
>> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
>> http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk