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Dorothea has some words about librarians and publishers.
"Librarians trust publishers. They just do. They don’t trust technology (no more they should, either), they don’t trust their patrons, and they don’t trust the society they work in (no more they should, either). But boy howdy, do they trust publishers and the official publishing process. Ask what “authority” means (and it’s a word that comes up a lot) and more often than not you’ll hear about the Sacred Publishing Process and how marvelous it is."
I'm having a hard time disagreeing with Dorothea. We are still taught in library school that we should be wary of online resources, but not print resources (especially new ones) On a similar note, I do think that our relationship to publishers has changed for the better. We no longer want to spend exorbitant amounts of money on periodicals and are fed up with the way that we (to be read: our patrons) are treated by these companies. In fact, the online world has made it easier for us to deal with publishers, in a way. We are finally gaining the upper hand.
Since Caveat Lector doesn't have a comment feature...
I thought it a little odd that Dorothea raised this issue in conjunction with, apparently, reading Future Libraries 8 years later (an assumption, but there are no other "Crawford & Gorman" works). I wasn't aware that the book implied a deep trust for publishers as such.
Speaking only for myself, I neither trust nor distrust publishers as a whole. I trust that some traditional publishers (by no means all) will put serious money into editorial work; I know full well that many publishers do as little editing as they can get away with, given the stuff that comes out. I trust that some traditional publishers will do thoughtful design work; it's all too clear that many publishers (including some tech publishers) don't give any thought to design.
When it comes to journal publishers...I have long been aware that some of them (particularly some, but not all, association publishers) serve their fields well, with prices based on costs and some plausible-but-not-excessive return, and that some of them gouge in various ways (raising prices as much as "the market" will bear, and then a little more; spinning off new journals in narrower and narrower fields, with lots of advance notice so they can earn interest on lots of advance library subscriptions, etc.). Libraries taking a more aggressive stance with such publishers is long overdue. I think we may be seeing a tipping point (and will be commenting on that), and hope so, although that may be my usual naive optimism.
Personally, I celebrate the fact that there are more (book) publishers in the U.S. now than there have ever been, most of them self- or mini-publishers, at least partly because the monster publishers have too often grown fat and lazy.
And if librarians aren't taught that print resources require some skepticism as well, they should be.
Posted by: Walt Crawford on December 15, 2003 10:41 AM