Thanks for defending the profession, Jean-Claude and I think you've made some important points.
However, there is nothing with service. Providing good service does not make one a servant. 20% of the work of an academic is commonly formally described as "service". One could also describe teaching and research as service activities. A good leader of the country serves the country. If librarians are and should not be servants (I agree with this), nevertheless the library itself is a service, and it will be easier for libraries to make the case to sustain and grow their support if the library is perceived as a useful and valued service, IMHO. Many libraries fully understand this, and I am familiar with examples of libraries that excel in both service to their universities or colleges and academic service to their profession. The obligation to consider service true of academic departments and universities, too - if we want to survive and thrive we need to recruit , retain and graduate students and demonstrate the value of their education. My perspective is that it would be helpful to the transition in scholarly communication for librarians and faculty to understand each other better. Following is an overgeneralization that I'd critique in one of my students papers :) Some researchers do not fully appreciate the value of the library profession. Some librarians do not fully appreciate the working conditions of scholars. There are some librarians who assume that the generous funding, tenure and secure salaries enjoyed by some faculty is the norm. The reality in many universities is that many faculty in arts, humanities and social sciences may have no research funding at all and no guarantees of funding for travel to conferences, and that in the US and Canada, the largest group of university professors are very part-time with no job security, benefits, or support for research activities whatsoever. Your point about the Charleston Conference (librarians and publishers together) is well taken. If librarians want to become more actively involved in scholarship (which I advocate), it might be best to spend less time talking with publishers (and even with other librarians) and more time talking with and understanding faculty members. One idea that I know some librarians are already doing is having librarians attend the conferences associated with the discipline(s) that they serve. Other ideas? best, Heather On 2014-09-24, at 9:10 AM, Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca<mailto:jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca>> wrote: Beware of categories such as "librarians" or "publishers" or even "researchers". Let us remember also that librarians were behind the creation of repositories back around 2003-4. Without them, their work and, often, their money and resources, we simply would not have these repositories. That some librarians should try to enforce very strict rules, etc. is not all that surprising: the profession is built on care, precision and rigorous management of an unwieldy set of objects. However, we should not paint the profession with too broad a brush. There is more to this: researchers often adopt a dismissive attitude with regard to librarians. They treat them as people delivering a service, i.e. as servants. Nothing could be more wrong. Librarians help us navigate the complex world of information. They are extremely important partners in the process of doing research. In some universities - and I believe this is the right attitude - some librarians acquire academic status and do research themselves. One thing that always surprises me is that, sometimes, it feels as if librarians were viewed as culprits and publishers as angels - the very term has been used. The use of global categories in either case is wrong, but the most exacting librarian that is vetting very precisely every item going into his/her repository will never skew and warp the fabric of scientific communication as some large publishers do. Let us keep things in perspective, please. This said, it is true that some librarians see their task as a procurement exercise, and they work with one strange guiding principle: keep good relationships with the "vendors", to use the dominant vocabulary. The Charleston conference that takes place every year is a perfect example of this trend: publishers and librarians meet with almost no researchers present. This amounts to a situation that is symmetrical to that of arrogant researchers. Researchers become "customers" of libraries, etc. And, of course, big publishers are only too happy to support such events. Librarians and researchers are natural allies. Elitist attitudes among researchers are anything but pleasant. Procurement objectives among librarians are obviously of the essence, but they should not become the sole guiding principle of librarians, and, IMHO, a great many librarians know this perfectly well. As for me, I love librarians. (disclosure: I married one... <face-smile.png> ). -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mercredi 24 septembre 2014 à 09:35 +0900, Andrew A. Adams a écrit : Dana Roth wrote: > Thanks to Stevan for reminding the list that working with librarians > will, in the long run, be much more productive than denigrating their > efforts. I am all in favour or working with librarians when those librarians are working to promote Open Access. When librarians work in ways which inhibit my view of the best route to Open Access, I reserve the right to criticise those actions. There are many librarians who do get it and with who I'm happy to share common cause, and to praise their efforts. I have in the past said that the ideal situation for promoting open access at an institution is for a coalition of reseaerchers, manager and librarians to work at explaining the benefits to the institution (in achieving its mission and in gaining early adopter relative benefits) to the rest of the researchers, managers and librarians. Unfortunately, in too many cases, librarians (often those who were not the original OA evangelist librarians) apply a wrong-headed set of roadblocks to institutional repository deposit processes which delays OA, makes deposit more frustrating and more difficult for researchers, and weakens the deposit process. It is these librarians that I wish to "get out of the way", not librarians in general. _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto:GOAL@eprints.org> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
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