Open Access and Library Mission in IHE

Barbara Fister has a great post  on why libraries are sometimes loath to embrace open access; why they keep deepening the hole by continuing to go for Big Deals in periodical subscriptions. I am starting this blog because I want to keep preaching the gospel of open access, but I also think there are other sustainable models. I attended the JSTOR/Portico Forum this past Tuesday and I am really excited by the possibilities which seem to be coming along with JSTOR. With the Current Scholarship Program, a library will be able to purchase one (1) title. It seems likely that by purchasing that one title, the library will gain search capability of the entire JSTOR archive--delivering lots of discoverability to their users. I am sold on the JSTOR collections as a way to gain access to multi-and interdisciplinary journals (and other material) and have no plans to discontinue any collections, but the ability to add specific journals in addition to the collections is an awesome idea. Theological librarians, if you missed the announcement in the ATLA June/July newsletter, there is a new pricing model for seminary libraries.

Back to open access, though. In the Portico part of the session, David Fritsch, Asst. Director, Outreach and Participation Services of JSTOR/Portico, mentioned that Portico has already brought live two scholarly society journal titles because they were "abandoned" by the huge for-profit publisher they had sold to. All of us who know people who run journals for scholarly societies need to encourage them to use an open access model.


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