From: Eric Elmore <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 16:17:50 +0000

I daresay the quality of teaching and student satisfaction with their
professors teaching would likely go up also.  I had a disturbing
number of professors in college who were(for one reason or another)
horrid in the classroom, but if you were lucky enough to get them in a
clinical/lab/research or graduate seminar setting they were bloody
brilliant.  Likewise I had a large number of perpetual adjunct
teachers/professors who were absolutely amazing in the classroom but
could never get tenured positions because their publication record
wasn't "exemplary".

The main problem with all the long-tail books that get published is
that publishers try to shoehorn them into the "must be profitable"
mold, which is ridiculous for academic publishing.  THE point of
academic publishing is to disseminate academic research and output,
not make a profit.  If a title can be profitable, amazing and
fantastic.  But very few academic titles are ever going to be
"profitable".    So does that mean they aren't "worthy" of being
published? No, just that they're not profitable.  Academia, by its'
very nature, is a non-profit endeavor. Trying to monetize every aspect
of it and attempting to make it a profit center out of it is a fool's
errand.

And that's not to say a lot of drek doesn't get published because of
the issues Karin brings up:)

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Eric Elmore                                                             |
Electronic Resources Coordinator                     |
The University of Texas at San Antonio            |
One UTSA Circle                                                     |
San Antonio, TX.  78249-0671                             |
(O)210-458-4916/(F)210-458-4577                    |
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-----Original Message-----
From: Karin Wikoff <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2014 05:41:03 -0400

It's beyond the scope of this forum, perhaps, but I would add to the
reasons why "an awful lot of these books probably shouldn't be
published."  People who were never cut out to be authors are forced to
publish in order to get tenure.  Some may not even care about the
topic, but just cast about for SOMETHING so they can meet the
requirements to keep their jobs, be promoted, have security in their
positions.  This is a problem with the tenure system -- I'm not
against tenure per se, but I am against a one-size-fits-all set of
requirements to obtain tenure.  If you haven't something to say, you
shouldn't be forced to write and publish just to keep your job.  You
may be a phenomenally good teacher without having something new to add
to the literature.  That goes for articles as well as books.  If so
many weren't forced to "publish or perish," I daresay the quality of
content would increase.

Maybe one reason some of those books sit on the shelves untouched is
because they don't contribute anything of value to the field (says the
author of an itty-bitty library textbook).

My opinion only -- but it feeds into the problem being discussed here.

Karin

Karin Wikoff
Electronic and Technical Services Librarian Ithaca College Library
Ithaca, NY 14850
Email: [log in to unmask]