From: Fred Jenkins <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2014 11:19:11 -0400

I don't think most of us are confusing specialized with poor quality.
I work in classics, so I see a lot of very good work with a very
limited audience. In general, there is a fair amount of mediocre and
some outright bad scholarship floating around (just look at all the
retractions in peer-reviewed science/social sicence journals in recent
years).  But for monographs, the problem really is that they have
become too expensive and too specialized for the current distribution
system.  It doesn't make economic sense for 100-200 libraries all to
buy monographs that might only be used in 5-10 of them.  The U presses
have largely been supported on the library side by approval plans and
standing orders that bought first and asked questions later.
Shrinking budgets require asking the questions first.

Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Dean for Collections and Operations
University of Dayton Libraries
Dayton, OH 45469-1360



On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 1:18 AM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: ANTHONY WATKINSON <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2014 11:04:38 +0100
>
> I agree very much with Rick's last sentence. Back in 2001 I wrote a
> report (available still) on Electronic Solutions to Problems of
> Monograph Publishing. One idea was that e-only books would save enough
> money (no print) to make some books publishable on economic grounds
> which could not be published in a print version. Many of us at that
> stage were over-optimistic and in any case no-one was doing e-only and
> no authors wanted if unless they were very desperate indeed and there
> was the question of tenure committees sniffing at e-only. As we know
> and as Sandy would/will point out most of the costs are before print -
> and POD is much more developed than it was then though even then Sven
> Fund announced POD as the way of the future.
>
> However I was once a research student in the humanities in a sub-sub
> division of history. If I had finished by dissertation (instead of
> becoming a librarian and then a publisher) my book would have been
> difficult to place - even if it was good scholarship. The numbers
> interested would have been too low. A specialised book is not the same
> as an unscholarly book. I have a feeling that some of the librarians
> posting have conflated poor books with books that have a small
> audience. I suspect that they cannot judge the difference (usually)
> but it is important in my view to make the distinction.
>
>
>
> From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 14:24:51 +0000
>
> >If that were the case, then some books presumably would have sold ONLY
> >to libraries.
>
> No, that doesn¹t follow. A book that "virtually no one needs to use or
> wants to read" may be purchased by a bunch of libraries and a handful of
> individuals. "Virtually no one" is an intentionally imprecise phrase. The
> question isn¹t whether these books are completely useless to everyone in
> the world. The question is whether they offer enough value to a large
> enough number of people to justify the cost and effort of publishing them
> in the traditional way.
>
> ---
> Rick Anderson
> Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
> Marriott Library, University of Utah
> [log in to unmask]