Libraries, Leadership, and Scholarly Communication
Essays by Rick Anderson

Rick Anderson (Author)

9780838914335

Paperback / softback, published 30 June 2016

240 pages
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.2 cm, 0.328 kg

A creative thinker on topics related to library collections and scholarly publishing, Rick Anderson does not back away from controversy. “Whenever we, as members of an organization like a library, are forced to choose between good things, we may start by trying to figure out some way to have both things,” he writes in the preface. “But in many cases, that will turn out to be impossible and we’ll have to decide which good thing is going to take priority over the other. We can’t make that decision without invoking values, and the moment we start invoking values is when the conversation can take a really difficult and interesting turn.” When it’s time for your organization to make choices and set priorities, this collection of essays, articles, white papers, and blog posts will provide conversation starters for your strategic discussions. Anderson offers engaging, persuasive arguments on a range of timely topics, such as:

• the decline of print;
• patron-driven acquisitions;
• Open Access (OA);
• blacklisting publishers and relations with publishers’ sales reps;
• patron privacy;
• symptoms of zealotry;
• unintended consequences of the print-on-demand model; and
• how to define library value

Preface

Section I: Libraries and Their Collections, Now and in the Future

• 1: Being Essential Is Not Enough
• 2 : My Name Is Ozymandias, King of Kings
• 3: The Crisis in Research Librarianship
• 4: The Portal Problem: The Twin Plights of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Library Collection
• 5: On Necessity, Virtue, and Digging Holes with Hammers
• 6: Can, Should, and Will
• 7: How Sacred Are Our Patrons’
  Privacy Rights? Answer Carefully
• 8: Crazy Idea #274: Just Stop Collecting
• 9: Local and Global, Now and Forever: A Matrix Model of “
  Depth Perception”
  in Library Work
• 10: A Quiet Culture War in Research Libraries—
  and What It Means for Librarians, Researchers, and Publishers
• 11: Interrogating the American Library Association’
  s “
  Core Values”
  Statement
• 12: Asserting Rights We Don’
  t Have: Libraries and “
  Permission to Publish”
  
• 13: Frenemies: The Perfect and the Good, the Noisy and the Important
• 14: What Patron-Driven Acquisition Does and Doesn’
  t Mean: An FAQ
• 15: Reference Services, Scalability, and the Starfish Problem
• 16: Kitten in a Beer Mug: The Myth of the Free Gift
• 17: You Might Be a Zealot If . . .
• 18: It’
  s Not about the Workflow: Patron-Centered Practices for Twenty-First-Century Serialists
• 19: Can’
  t Buy Us Love: The Declining Importance of Library Books and the Rising Importance of Special Collections
• 20: On Knowing the Value of Everything and the Price of Nothing
• 21: Preservation, Yes—
  but What Shall We Preserve?
• 22: The Struggle for Library Space