From: Jean-Claude Guédon <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 10:15:54 -0500 Sandy is quite right. This said, university librarians are not against university presses; they just try reacting to unfortunate financial situations. This means that libraries and university presses should work much more closely together, and there are some signs that this is beginning to happen. Remember, as a set of institutions, the universities of the world have all they need to run and manage a communication system that is fairer, more efficient and cheaper than the present system. All is needed is more collaboration and less competition. With regard to competition, never forget that whoever organizes and runs a competitive system gains power out of it. Competition shapes the nature of the effort to be accomplished; it helps identify champions; it does precious little to improve the general quality of all the participants. Some degree of competition in some limite, elite, groups, may make sense, but as a general tool to manage complex systems, it is inadequate, not to say counterproductive. The competitive essence of the US health system is a perfect example of all this: lots of Nobel prizes and a general life expectancy for the country at abysmal levels. Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 16 janvier 2014 à 18:36 -0500, LIBLICENSE a écrit : From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 10:47:41 -0600 There is some good news for university presses in this decision, viz., "They cannot go on cutting back the acquisition of monographs to compensate for such price increases." Sandy Thatcher From: Jean-Claude Guédon <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 16:31:32 -0500 It has long argued that the cost of access to scholarly and periodicals was rising at an unsustainable rate. Here is confirmation of the fact. Recent budgetary cutbacks in the Province of Quebec have led the director of libraries at the Université de Montréal (disclosure: my university) to refuse to renew the "Big Deal" with Wiley. The publisher has responded by rather drastic price offers and absurd arguments (as you will be able to read below). In effect - and this is a new one for me - your subscription rates with a publisher may depend on how long a faithful customer you have been. In other words, if you are not a good boy or a good girl, we shall punish you. In the airplane industry, I had heard of frequent travellers enjoying free or cheap upgrades, but I had never heard that less frequent travellers had to pay more for their seats! Are publishers even worse than airlines? I have translated the French-language announcement that is available on the site of our libraries and which you can check for yourself if Molière's tongue is not too esoteric for you. The URL is http://www.bib.umontreal.ca/communiques/20140115-DB-annulation-periodiques-wiley.htm One conclusion emerges immediately: confidentiality clauses are something to be rejected generally, as a collective move to put the publishers on notice that the advantage of the panoptic position is not theirs alone. The prisoner's dilemma is not to be accepted. The second thing to mention is that the director of our libraries is going to need all the support he can get from both within the university (and he has it here) and across all universities, especially ARL universities. I should hope that messages of support and ideas as to tactics, as well as sharing of similar experiments may converge toward him at [log in to unmask] . Canadian librarians, in particular, should quickly show their full support for the courageous move of our Library Director. Here is the announcement aimed at the university community that came out last afternoon and which I translated this morning: ******* [SNIP]