From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2017 23:56:35 +0000

> On the other hand, as more libraries get into the business of publishing,
> they may need more staff!

To Joe’s question, though, I think the question here is not so much whether
libraries would need more staff in order to sustain publishing operations,
but rather how much the libraries’ host institutions want them to be
publishers. Where the university strongly favors that direction, I think
the library’s budget will stay strong even if the cost of access to
scholarship were to become effectively nil. But wherever the ultimate
source of an academic library’s funding is the institution it serves, it
won’t be purely up to the library whether or not it develops a robust
publishing program.

(Anticipating one possible response, I’ll preemptively point out here that
moving the university press into the library is not necessarily the same
thing as encouraging the library to develop a library-based publishing
program—especially if the UP comes without any additional institutional
subvention. In some cases it may just reflect the institution’s desire to
move one cost center under the umbrella of another one.)

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
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