Joe -
Open Access is wonderful - although the standards of many OA journals are somewhat lax today. The real problem for researchers is that OA means little if you can't find the articles that you need when you need them. Google Scholar is as hopeless as Google. The shift to so many preprint/repository/OA publications begs the need for a strong, comprehensive indexing system - which is woefully lacking today.
I did a
study in the field of Disability Studies a few years ago and found that the majority of DS journals are OA and freely available on the web - but only ONE was comprehensively indexed cover-to-cover and that was in Web of Science. If you can't find the articles integrated into the traditional indexes of the scholarly fields, we are only taking a major step backwards - not forward.
Is this a slam-dunk for the future of libraries or indexes? No. I'm shocked at the number of libraries/librarians so openly talking about canceling scholarly indexes in favor of (lord help us) Google Scholar. Librarians and their institutions should be putting a whole lot more effort into quality control and access; however, it doesn't seem to be happening.