[PLUG-TALK] Why Multnomah County Library will stop buying e-books from Macmillan Publishers

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 6 Nov 2019, Paul Heinlein wrote:

> ... if they were forced to buy it all or wait for it to show up on the radio,
> at the movie theatre, or in the local library.

Paul,

That's a valid point. Seems to me that immediate gratification is no longer
acceptable to many whereas it wasn't that long ago we didn't mind waiting
for books, movies, and mail-order purchases.

> The downside is that long-term ownership (or "licensing until the original
> media is no longer usable") becomes harder and more subject to the whims
> of publishers. Libraries obviously get the brunt of that, but so do
> collectors of music or video. As it becomes harder to purchase physical
> media, we become more beholden to publishers.

This has been a major issue in the scientific publishing industry. When I
was publishing research in journals I did not need to pay to publish, and
journal subscriptions were affordable for mere mortals such as myself.
University libraries paid several thousands of dollars per year for
subscriptions, and they subscribed to hundreds of them. That's changed.

Now, if an academic researcher does not have funds in a research grant for
publication they must either pay the high publishing fees themselves, not
publish (and perish in the academic grind), or publish on no-charge web
sites such as the Journal of Regulatory Science (as I did a couple of years
ago) or PLoS1.

More annoying is scientific journal publishers demanding payment of $25-50
per article for digitial copies, even of articles published many years ago.
Feh! One reason I vote for MultCoLib funding every time it comes up. I can
get articles I need through interlibrary loan and happily wait the time for
the local folks to find a subscriber who'll scan and send the article. At no
cost to me.

It's a serious issue for many of us.

Regards,

Rich