lfa

Nice short review of the improved performance, design and features of Ask.com search engine (replaced Ask Jeeves) is in the newest LOEX Quarterly.

Per the Library Journal’s news item, 800 of 1000 reference titles they looked at are still print only! Obviously they haven’t seen our strategic plan which indicates we want to move to electronic formats…

Bergstrom, Carl T. and Theodor C. Bergstrom. (2006). “The economics of ecology journals.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: Vol. 4, No. 9, pp. 488–495.

Carl is at the University of Washington Dept. of Biology and Theodore is at the University of California Santa Barbara Dept. of Economics.

Abstract: Over the past decade, scientific publishing has shifted from a paper-based distribution system to one largely built upon electronic access to journal articles. Despite this shift, the basic patterns of journal pricing have remained largely unchanged. The large commercial publishers charge dramatically higher prices to institutions than do professional societies and university presses. These price differences do not reflect differences in quality as measured by citation rate. We discuss the effect of price and citation rate of a journal on library subscriptions and offer an explanation for why competition has not been able to erode the price differences between commercial and non-profit journals.

Not all that much new information for librarians, but the authors are researchers speaking to researchers.

From the article (discussing the Taylor & Francis journal The Journal of Natural History:

Why is it that, despite its low impact factor and falling subscriptions, Taylor and Francis has radically increased the subscription price of the oldest journal in ecology, and the only one that can claim Darwin as an author? Evidently the publisher is banking on the proposition that libraries will be slow to cancel a journal with such an illustrious history, even at $6735 per year. In the long run, it is unlikely that pricing at $90 per recent citation is sustainable. We suspect that the journal may be heading into a “death spiral” of increased prices, reduced circulation, and falling impact factor.

On why ecologists should care, when it is librarians who buy the journals:

We disagree! First of all, academics have considerable influence over the subscription decisions of the libraries that serve them. Librarians commonly look to faculty and graduate students for guidance in their subscription decisions. As practicing scientists come to a more sophisticated understanding of the prices that various journals charge for access, and of the value that they deliver, they will be able to make better recommendations to their librarian colleagues.

Excellent set of articles in the current issue including very timely pieces on Faculty-Librarian Collaboration to Achieve Integration of Information Literacy (by Lindstrom & Shonrock), Core Competencies for Business Reference and Libraries in the Contact Zone: On the Creation of Educational Space (James Elmborg). RSS subscription available.

A final report from the University of California Libraries Bibliographic Services Task Force provides a somewhat daunting list of goals for better serving library patrons. Some things we are already well on our way to doing. Read the executive summary to get an overview.