From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:08:17 +0000


>If there is reason to believe that librarians are reluctant to buy
>revised dissertations, then indeed providing that information is doing
>a disservice to authors because librarians are not acting on as much
>information as the publishers themselves have about these books.

But this is true of every book, whether dissertation-based or not: the
publisher will always have access to more information about the books it
publishes than a librarian will. (Particularly if the publisher refuses to
share relevant information about the book, believing that fewer libraries
will buy if they know what they're getting.)

So by this logic, librarians really shouldn't be entrusted with selecting
books for their collections at all. The content of library collections
should be determined by publishers, since they have so much more
information about their books. (Still less should patrons select the books
that they -- in their blinkered ignorance -- believe they need in order to
do their work. After all, they have even less information about these
books than librarians do.)

It seems to me that would save a lot of time and energy would be if we all
simply shut up and handed all our money over to the publishers, in return
silently and gratefully accepting whatever books they deign, in their
greater wisdom and knowledge, to bestow upon us.

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