Open Access News

As information has become more and more of a commodity, the library's countervailing role in continuing to make it available for its intellectual, i.e., research and instructional, value and purposes has risen. SPARC and Open Access agendas come to mind as do also Big Deals and consortial purchases --all new ways of increasing access to information while reducing the financial dimension for end users. But probably more important is something which every library has done for ages simply as a matter of course --removing financial considerations altogether from the day to day use of information for library patrons. Information may not be free to the library, but the library effectively makes it available without individual cost to the members of the local academic community. Professors, students and even staff do not have to consider the cost of the information they use....

The PPV approach changes the whole equation. Informal reports of experiments with PPV by consortia suggest that unless the experimental pricing models for PPV are seriously changed, the information costs to libraries is bound to increase substantially. But this is not the real monster. The real problem is that PPV inserts the financial issue directly into the local individual use of information by students, professors and academic staff. The formerly safe harbor of local information use without financial constraint in order to pursue academic goals disappears as does the library's ability to pursue an agenda of encouraging information use within this safe harbor. For the academic community the cost of information becomes a direct and immediate factor in making assignments, doing research, or even just staying up to date on research. A use in September may preclude a use in November and how do we allocate uses between faculty, graduate students and undergrads? For librarians, their role in encouraging and expanding access to information is transformed instead into monitoring use and rationing access. It is librarians, finally and completely transformed into accountants rather than pursuing their traditional role as information providers (a truly alarming vision on multiple levels!)...

Comment. If you have to pay for access, it's better to pay once for multiple views than multiple times for multiple views. But one-time subscription payments may cost less than many separate pay-per-view payments, especially when the latter are combined with the disturbing mission-costs of policing and discouraging access. We can sweat about where to strike the balance or we can move on to OA.