From: Eric Elmore <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 16:17:50 +0000 I daresay the quality of teaching and student satisfaction with their professors teaching would likely go up also. I had a disturbing number of professors in college who were(for one reason or another) horrid in the classroom, but if you were lucky enough to get them in a clinical/lab/research or graduate seminar setting they were bloody brilliant. Likewise I had a large number of perpetual adjunct teachers/professors who were absolutely amazing in the classroom but could never get tenured positions because their publication record wasn't "exemplary". The main problem with all the long-tail books that get published is that publishers try to shoehorn them into the "must be profitable" mold, which is ridiculous for academic publishing. THE point of academic publishing is to disseminate academic research and output, not make a profit. If a title can be profitable, amazing and fantastic. But very few academic titles are ever going to be "profitable". So does that mean they aren't "worthy" of being published? No, just that they're not profitable. Academia, by its' very nature, is a non-profit endeavor. Trying to monetize every aspect of it and attempting to make it a profit center out of it is a fool's errand. And that's not to say a lot of drek doesn't get published because of the issues Karin brings up:) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Eric Elmore | Electronic Resources Coordinator | The University of Texas at San Antonio | One UTSA Circle | San Antonio, TX. 78249-0671 | (O)210-458-4916/(F)210-458-4577 | [log in to unmask] | ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -----Original Message----- From: Karin Wikoff <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2014 05:41:03 -0400 It's beyond the scope of this forum, perhaps, but I would add to the reasons why "an awful lot of these books probably shouldn't be published." People who were never cut out to be authors are forced to publish in order to get tenure. Some may not even care about the topic, but just cast about for SOMETHING so they can meet the requirements to keep their jobs, be promoted, have security in their positions. This is a problem with the tenure system -- I'm not against tenure per se, but I am against a one-size-fits-all set of requirements to obtain tenure. If you haven't something to say, you shouldn't be forced to write and publish just to keep your job. You may be a phenomenally good teacher without having something new to add to the literature. That goes for articles as well as books. If so many weren't forced to "publish or perish," I daresay the quality of content would increase. Maybe one reason some of those books sit on the shelves untouched is because they don't contribute anything of value to the field (says the author of an itty-bitty library textbook). My opinion only -- but it feeds into the problem being discussed here. Karin Karin Wikoff Electronic and Technical Services Librarian Ithaca College Library Ithaca, NY 14850 Email: [log in to unmask]