From: Marcus A Banks <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 5 May 2016 03:58:37 +0000

Lisa’s thought experiment is right on target from my perspective.
Librarians spend a lot of time managing licenses and guarding against
network breaches, all of which would be better spent building useful
workflow tools for researchers.

Marcus Banks, UC Davis Blaisdell Library


On May 4, 2016, at 6:21 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: "Hinchliffe, Lisa W" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 23:24:19 +0000

I always enjoy a thought experiment….

If content were all open (and in this thought experiment let’s assume
that is retroactive as well), GS could serve the function (as long as
GOOG keeps it around). But, if we in libraries could re-purpose all
the effort that is currently spent in libraries on enabling
toll-access and mitigating against breaches, we might also create
in-the-workflow tools for research groups/communities/campuses that
would put access and discovery into existing information task tools
rather than relying on a separate GS or the like system where
information resources are retrieved and then brought into other
systems for use, manipulation, etc. They could instead be accessed in
situ. Especially if we are talking known item retrieval. For topical
searches, I think the lessons of many studies of web-scale discovery
thus far show that - as much value as there can be in “here’s
everything search across it” – there is also value in curated
collections for particular communities and content areas. So, we could
do more of that as well if we didn’t have to always battle against
content being in different toll-access systems.

Lisa

**********************************************************************************************************
Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Professor/ Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction
University Library, University of Illinois, 1408 West Gregory Drive,
Urbana, Illinois 61801
[log in to unmask], 217-333-1323 (v), 217-244-4358 (f)
**********************************************************************************************************


From: Ivy Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 01:59:19 +0000

I agree, convenience trumps all. There is power in aggregation - but
if content were open, wouldn't Google Scholar already serve that
function?  I take no position on that, but I do agree that reliable
and convenient friction-free access is the draw. You can go to SciHub
and it works (apparently). And if all journals were OA, you could go
to Google Scholar and they would work.  R4Life and such, as I
understand it, don't operate that seamlessly, nor do toll-based
authentication systems even when one has legitimate access. So
convenience, yes, for sure. I'm just not sure that SciHub would be
needed to solve that problem in an OA world as long as Google Scholar
exists. But maybe there would still be a role for it.

On the other hand, as Mike Taylor says in his blog, maybe things are
fine as they are.  Publishers are paid for subscriptions, users have
access via SciHub, and everyone is happy.

Ivy