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OID: SIANME Forum Summary -- May 1, 1998

Scholarship in a New Media Environment
California Digital Library
May 1, 1998
Moderator
 		Alison Bunting, Associate University Librarian for Sciences, Biomedical Library
Panel
 		Marion Peters, Head, Public Services, UCLA Science & Engineering Library
Dennis Rodgerson, Professor, Department of Pathology

Dennis Rodgerson, the first speaker, quoted Charles Williams Elliot of Harvard, "The Library is the heart of the University," then noted that too little attention is paid to this vital organ. He likened libraries to public utilities; so long as they are providing electricity, nobody questions their operation.

But libraries, he noted, are going though tumultuous times. The volume of information is increasing exponentially in inverse relation to resources available to handle it. This is beginning to have a severe impact in a number of areas, of which the nature of scholarship, copyright, and publishing, both in electronic format and in print, are just a few. Since scholarship is so intimately connected with research and publication, changes in the way material is published, and archived, can have serious implications for faculty in terms of advancement, copyright, peer review, merit and tenure review.

Turning to copyright, Rodgerson noted that scholarly copyright content derives from faculty. Faculty routinely assign copyright to publishers, who print, bind, and distribute journals. At the present moment, publishers are experiencing hard times. This has motivated many companies to convert their printed into acquisition into lucrative revenue stream, charging the universities, and the faculty who provided them with the articles, high fees for accessing them. This has placed a heavy burden on the university library systems.

Rodgerson pointed out that he has been involved with the California Digital Library process for eight years. He served on the University Committee on Library, then served as its Chair. He was asked to sit on Library Task Force (Library, Planning, and Initiative Taskforce) set up by President following a retreat to deal with a crisis in library planning. What evolved was a plan to establish a committee to maximize resources of university. This Committee began in September 1996, and completed its work in March, 98, at which point a Task Force chaired by Charles Kennell, and including Richard Lucier, then librarian at UCSF. Lucier has since been selected as first librarian of California Digital Library. The remainder of the Task Force was made up of representatives from Deans, faculties, and the UC's libraries.

Task Force defined the major issues facing the UC library system as follows:

  1. There is a serious library crisis, which threatens the basic mission of the university.
  2. Crisis and impact is international, not just local.
  3. Current practices, including building nine research collections, cannot be sustained, due to a number of factors, including resources.
  4. Cutting resources will not solve problems.
  5. Problems cannot be solved in isolation, as they have deeper roots in the whole structure of higher education
  6. Certain immediate actions need to be taken as steps to be taken to develop a sustainable library system.

The Task Force sent the following recommendations to the President. The second recommendation, the establishment of the California Digital Library, has since been implemented.

The seven strategies that were recommended were:

  1. University should seek innovative and cost effective means to strengthen resource sharing
  2. Establishment of California Digital Library, of which Richard Lucier was to Librarian
  3. That the UC should sustain and develop mechanisms to support campus print collections
  4. That the UC should seek mutually beneficial arrangement with museums, universities, businesses.
  5. That the UC should develop information infrastructure to support need to disseminate information within academic environment.
  6. That the UC should take the lead in the process of disseminating scientific information.
  7. That the UC should organize environments for continuous planning and innovation.

The President has allocated significant funds to support both collections and required personnel, and measurable progress has been made in setting up the California Digital Library.

Alison Bunting began her presentation by demonstrating some of the features already implemented in the Melvyl Journal Article databases (http://melvyl.ucop.edu/), to provide access to electronic journals. The most convenient way to access journal titles is to use Electronic Resources in the Sciences page (http://www.library.ucla.edu/etext/sciences/ejournals/. Bunting also noted that the Science, Technology & Industry collection will eventually provide access to other materials such as technical reports.

Marion Peters noted that the Science, Technology, and Industry Collection Initiative planning began in 1997. The UC Committee included Alison Bunting, who served as UCLA's representative. It was this committee's task to identify journals and material suitable for inclusion in the STIC Collection. To obtain faculty input UCLA librarians distributed questionnaire to surveys to 44 departments. Faculty were given three tasks:

  1. To list five journals read most frequently by individuals with their research interests.
  2. To list five journals faculty would most like their students to read.
  3. To provide information on publications UCLA is publishing which could be added to the CDL.

In addition to the questionnaire, UCLA librarians attended thirty-six faculty meetings, sent out email, mailed paper copies, and erected a website to capture faculty input. In all, the Committee reached 700 faculty were contacted 556 responses were received. Eleven faculty made use of the website, 45 replied by email, 190 faculty responded by paper.

Of the three questions listed above, the following responses were provided by faculty:

  1. Most popular journals: Cell, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Science. There were over 1000 titles faculty either read or would like to see.
  2. Number of titles for students to read: 668.
  3. Overlap between biochemistry and statistics in terms of listed journals and titles was significant.

In general, so many of the journals cited by faculty were already available electronically, that it was decided that a one-stop shopping approach for these journals would be a real help. The UCLA team then developed it. This site debuted in mid-March and is linked off main UCLA Library page on Digital Resources (http://www.library.ucla.edu).

Questions and Answers

Q. Are these journals covering social science subjects?
A. Yes. For example, the license agreement with Academic Press includes in their titles some in the social sciences. Consult the library's web page for additional titles. (http://www.library.ucla.edu).

Alison Bunting noted here the disparity in contractual arrangements between one journal and another. For example, Science was not interested in an institutional agreement, preferring instead individual agreements. Both Science and Nature followed differing pricing schemes, using a per-computer or per-IP address scheme to set their prices.
Q. Why was science selected first?
A. Because science had such a preponderance of material already in electronic form. Next collection will be from social sciences or humanities. The UCLA Library is committed to following a similar process in terms of soliciting input from faculty. Most of the material were already available in sciences (Rodgerson).

Alison Bunting and Rodgerson noted here that Special Collections materials were not widely available, and thus the web provided a good conduit for making them available. Goal is now to digitize material in special collections. A. Bunting demonstrated experimental project to accomplish this. Librarians normally prepare a "paper finding" aid to provide access to archival collections. These are being mounted on the web. The next step would be to digitize the actual materials, so one can link on a finding aid entry and see the document. As an experiment, the library selected material from Japanese American Research Project, the Ishigo papers (http://hamachi.library.ucla.edu/ishigo/) where one of these special collection paper finding aids had been catalogued in this way The digitizing was done in the Office of Instructional Development. The CDL is creating the Online Archive of California which to date includes 1,800 finding aids contributed by many California libraries. These can be viewed at: ( http://sunsite.berkeley.edu:18028/dynaweb/oac/@generic_collectionview). Sophisticated search engines need to be developed to make these collections maximally accessible.
Q. When will we know how to estimate the cost of digitizing materials?
A. A. Bunting noted Brian Schottlander taking the lead in this area. Based on Ishigo project, he has formulated a rough idea of what it would cost to digitize the materials for the web.
Q. In the humanities, primary texts are key. But it is tempting to select the most inexpensive (and usually the oldest) texts available. These texts are often unreliable or of questionable value.
A. Rodgerson noted this was a difficult issue. There were serious copyright and legal issues to resolve before solutions can be found. No doubt faculty input and assistance will be required to clear up some of these issues. Rodgerson went on to note that choosing the sciences first was done because this material was relatively accessible through the publishers. But leaving the thornier issues of selecting texts for use by the Humanities proved to be an enormously contentious issue.
Q. Many departments have their own small libraries. Should they create their own digitized library and then connect to the California Digital Library?
A. A. Bunting noted it might be wise to take advantage of the California Digital Library first to make use of added features, such as search engines. But smaller libraries could be created and linked.
Q. Are print subscriptions going to be cancelled?
A. University is struggling to balance resources between print and electronic acquisitions. Print will be maintained until the Library is sure that electronic versions are reliable and complete, and archiving plans are developed.
Q. Does that mean the more esoteric journals will be abandoned.
A. Due to budget limitations, the Library is forced to cancel lesser used journal titles. This has been happening since 1991.
Q. As you cancel subscriptions, what are you doing about linking to databases of other universities.
A. One initiative will enable user to request items at other collections without having to go through the intermediary of library staff. A plan to do this within the next fiscal year will be implemented and link all the UC?s. Courier service will provide 24-hour north-south delivery. Ultimately, goal is to have national agreements as well.
Q. What about providing access to outside community?
A. The agreements for licensing materials for digital materials provides remote access only for faculty, staff and students in the UC system. Anyone physically present in a library can access electronic resources there, but they will not be able to have remote access.
Q. How many back issues in electronic format will be available? How will these be archived? If journals subscriptions are cancelled, will they be still available to scholars?
A. This has not been worked out. Varies from publisher to publisher. Usually, if library pays for a subscription, it continues to have access to what was subscribed for. But will publishers make that material easily available ten years from now? That is an uncertain area. As a consequence, library is moving carefully in terms of canceling subscriptions to journals. There is a plan to retain two subscriptions to each journal in print for archival purposes.
Q. What is happening nationally? Are other efforts afoot like this one? And what about search engines? Are they powerful enough to discriminate?
A. UC is a leader, if not the leader, in the process. A number of other universities, but relatively small number, are doing same thing. And the door is always open to others. For example, a major effort was made to include CSU?s in the process. This effort is an ongoing endeavor. Obviously, for some systems it would be more efficient to share resources. As far as a search engine goes, that is a problem not just for libraries but for internet in general.
Q. Did the Committee see a role for academics to lobby the publishers to put pressure on them to make materials available?
A. Much discussion on this point. Taskforce on copyright was part of the discussion. Scholarly information stems from the scholar, and the scholar owns the copyright. Most publishers will not publish unless copyright signed over to them. The big stick that University holds is the copyright. Copyright laws are now being reconsidered by Congress. Task Force anticipated more restrictive copyright laws. As of now, this has not materialized. But electronic publishing puts control of unauthorized copies into the hands of the publishers. Since publishing is central to the whole system of academic employment and promotion, the peer review process may have to change, as it has in the case of physicists using the Los Alamos preprint service. But the question is, does University play the copyright trump card (e.g., retain all rights to material created by its faculty), or does it try to negotiate a mutually acceptable agreement? (Rodgerson)

A. Bunting: If you go to UCLA Library Main Web Page, under News and Events, Go to Pew Roundtable on Scholarly Communication. It raises a lot of these issues and some potential solutions (http://www.library.ucla.edu).

You can view the entire forum on videotape by asking for California Digital Library at the Instructional Media Lab, 270 Powell.