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