Open Access – Just When We Need It
I’m sure many of us are in the same dismal place – trying to find ways to cope with flat or reduced budgets when costs of journals and electronic resources stubbornly rise year after year. The one bright spot that cheers me up is the steady march of open access initiatives. Boston University faculty voted to support the idea not long ago. More faculties at Harvard have joined forces with their groundbreaking Arts & Sciences faculty. Now MIT – unanimously. Immediately. Wow!
So what is our role in all this? Clearly, we’re part of the infrastructure for making the case and providing the place for these materials to be made public. But – how often have you heard about an intriguing paper, published by an academic librarian in a journal that allows self-archiving (such as ACRL publications, portal, and Journal of Academic Librarianship) and been unable to find a copy online? How often have you wondered why librarians sign contracts with publishers who assume all rights and don’t allow for self-archiving? Why can’t we walk the walk?
That’s why I was so cheered to see at Infofetishist that Oregon State University librarians have adopted OA for themselves. Peter Suber thinks this is a good idea. It’s an important symbol to the rest of the academic community. It says to the world, we can do this.
What about you? Would you support an open access mandate in your library?
Posted by Barbara Fister on March 19th, 2009 under Uncategorized.
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Pingback from More Open Access News: MIT joins Boston U. for university-wide Open Access « Circulation
Time: March 19, 2009, 2:27 pm
[...] Barbara Fister from the ACRL blog writes some nice thoughts about this new development (see her post Open Access — Just When We Need It). [...]
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