RE: Open Scholarship 2006: New Challenges for Open Access Repositories

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> Indeed one of the speakers in Glasgow told the Lund meeting 
> that librarians who did not concentrate on this (narrow?) 
> agenda were traitors to the cause.

One has to wonder what cause the speaker felt librarians are 
supposed to be engaged in...

> Do librarians reading this list feel that repositories should 
> be designed to serve faculty and their expressed needs or do 
> they feel that a different agenda is more appropriate to their 
> role in these matters?

I'm not sure that the two goals are really mutually exclusive. 
However, in an environment that offers libraries limited 
resources, it's important that we be able to make rational 
choices about what projects will take priority.  For most 
libraries, the priority is (and should be, IMHO) meeting the 
needs of the research communities they serve.  The faculty and 
students of the university that pays me have the first claim on 
my time and energy.  Making the world safe for one or another 
scholarly information project (however desirable) has to take 
second billing.  So if I'm going to set up a repository using UNR 
time and UNR resources, it had better meet UNR needs first and 
foremost.  If we can set it up in a way that makes the world a 
better place as well, so much the better -- but that goal comes 
second.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu