[PLUG] The end of libraries

[Keith Lofstrom]

I'm just back from a weekend conference and a few days in the
San Jose / Palo Alto area, which I had intended to spend doing
research in the Stanford libraries.  Stanford used to have the
best physics/technical library on the West Coast.

Perhaps they still do, if you are a student or professor, have
access to their electronic books, and can do proper research with
one screen at a time.  But their hard science book library is now
only 8 rows of 24 feet of shelving, with 95% of their collection
in offsite storage.  Stanford has "less on the floor" than Portland
State University (or San Jose State, now the south bay leader).

Journal articles are institutional subscription, or $35 per article
for outsiders.  Portland State is the same deal, except many of the
same journals are still on PSU shelves.

In the quest for "convenience", universities are surrendering their
freedom to the four big academic monopolies.  When paper versions
disappear, you can bet that the monopolies will raise prices until
the universities have to choose between academic staff and online
access.  With the DMCA protecting publishers, who's to stop them?

For now, Oregon Health Sciences University, Washington State, and
the University of Washington still permit visitors access to their
online collections, but this is expensive and could disappear. 
Worse, common-mode information system vulnerabilities at the big
four could wipe out much of the academic corpus.  If the lights
are blinking on a backup drive during a restore, is that actually
a restore, or an erasure?

Yes, electronic journals are convenient.  But copies should be
widely distibuted:  purchase the content once, watermarked perhaps,
and keep a copy on your local institutional hardware, forever. 

If the publishes insist on monopoly custody, or even monoculture
software and hardware, then they should operate their monopolies
subject to capital punishment (!) for executives and stockholders if
they irretrievably lose civilization's crown jewels.  Those will be
a fraction of the lives that will be lost if this vital information
disappears.

Aaron Schwartz died for our sins.  We're next.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com