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

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Rich" == Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> writes:

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

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serials_crisis

This was a thing that was understood, discussed, and considered a crisis
when my wife was in library school in the mid-1990s. It has not gotten
any better in the interim.

There have been revolts before (open-access journals, institutional
repositories, etc), but progress is very slow and not generally assisted
by the "captured" representatives we send to Washington DC.

The first time I walked through downtown Portland carrying a sign was on
this general subject, when the Russian guy who'd discovered and
disclosed a vulnerability in e-book encryption was arrested by the FBI at
DefCon or something.

  https://www.cyber-rights.org/documents/free_dmitry.htm
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd.


-- 
Russell Senior, President
russell at personaltelco.net