Tamara Traubman, Budget cuts hit university libraries hard, Ha'aretz, March 2, 2005. Excerpt: 'Dr. Y. gives a course every year in the humanities and social sciences faculties of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. But recently, he says, he has been having difficulty. At the end of the semester, he asked his students to write papers, but when they went to the library to gather information, they were unable to find updated material in the field. The number of new acquisitions for the social sciences library has dropped by 80 percent over the past four years - from 2,915 to 556, Haaretz has learned. "In certain fields, hardly any books and periodicals are being bought," Y. says. In the end, he was forced to bring them books from his own home. This phenomenon is common to all the universities in Israel today. The libraries are the major victims of the massive cuts in budgets for higher education. In many libraries, acquisitions have dropped by 50 percent or more....M., who recently completed a doctorate at Tel Aviv University, says..."The university subscribes to one out of every four publications and new research is not easily available in the libraries. In certain fields, the lecturers prepare a book list knowing that the students will have to use older or partial materials."...Over 14 years, the price of a subscription to a scientific periodical has tripled, and universities are buying fewer books so that the market has virtually disappeared in several fields. Until the 1960s, most books were published by small publishing houses that belonged to non-profit organizations. Since then, a small group of large corporations, notably Elsevier Reed, have taken them over and raised prices. They force the universities to buy packages of journals, and those who try to break up the package find that the individual publication costs them more than the entire package. The universities have hardly any leverage for bargaining. Prof. David Degani, academic director of the Technion's library, says: "There is a constant struggle to decide which materials to give up. Clearly we are below the acceptable minimum right now." '
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/02/2005 08:20:00 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.
