In today's Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott Carlson interviews Steven J. Bell, library director of Philadelphia University. The interview follows up Bell's article in the January issue of American Libraries (only the TOC is free online). Bell argues that for student researchers, access to more information is not always better. Quantity of information can jeopardize the student's discovery and selection of quality information. Students are (still) thinking that if information is not free and online, or on the first page of search returns, then it's not worth finding.
(PS: I've often written to deplore this short-sighted attitude. The fact that we want free online access to full texts doesn't mean that we already have it. Limiting searches to free online sources can be wishful thinking that undermines the adequacy of a search. But having said that, let me also add that the expectation by the rising generation of researchers that full-text journal articles ought to be free and online is one of the greatest assets of the FOS movement. As Thomas Kuhn argued, doddering paradigms tend to topple not because someone produced sufficient evidence or a decisive experiment, but because the diehards died off and a new generation took their place. I welcome evidence that young researchers look first in free online sources. They should. That's by far the most convenient place to look. Our job is to put more information in that basket, not persuade researchers to start with less convenient sources. Students should understand that free online sources are not yet adequate in most fields. But the rest of us should understand that the best remedy is to make them adequate.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/23/2003 11:42:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
