Re: Sally Morris

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Dear Fred and All:  As Fred writes, Sally Morris is indeed a very 
special person and all of our communities owe her immense thanks. 
In addition to the dialog opportunities noted below, Sally 
brought to ALPSP a renewed level of energy, vitality, and 
programmatic achievement. The organization expanded 
significantly, commissioned and promulgated useful studies, upped 
the number of useful programs, workshops, and training courses, 
launched major and successful initiatives, and reached out in 
partnership to many of us in appropriate and productive ways. 
Sally is always forthright, down-to-earth, rational, clear, and 
imaginative, qualities of high value.

It's my understanding that while retiring from ALPSP, Sally is 
hardly leaving the scholarly communications world, as she will be 
editing the journal Learned Publishing and bringing to it the 
same kind of thoughtfulness and excellence we have come to expect 
from any Sally Morris-led activity.  I hope we will continue 
hearing from her as she takes on this new role.

Warm wishes to Sally and to all for 2007,

Ann Okerson/Yale Library


On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, "FrederickFriend" wrote:

> No doubt publishers have paid their own tributes to Sally 
> Morris on her retirement as Chief Executive of ALPSP, but this 
> tribute comes from one who holds great respect for Sally's work 
> in constructive dialogues with the academic and library 
> communities. Sally's contribution in two for a demonstrated her 
> wish to approach difficult topics in a way which would produce 
> solutions rather than problems, understanding rather than 
> confrontation. In the late 1990s Sally played a major role in 
> the JISC/PA discussions in the UK, discussions which tackled 
> difficult topics such as the place of fair dealing in an 
> electronic environment and which were held under "Chatham 
> House" rules, i.e. we could express views openly without being 
> reported. This environment helped those of us from the academic 
> and library communities to explore and understand the 
> publishers' viewpoint and I hope enabled publishers to explore 
> and understand our viewpoint. The JISC/PA discussions also had 
> a practical outcome in the form of a Model Licence which Sally 
> had a big hand in drafting.
>
> This approach was followed in the discussions in the Zwolle 
> Group set up by SURF to enable a dialogue on copyright between 
> all stakeholders, and again Sally played a vital role in that 
> dialogue. We managed to get away from the controversial issue 
> of who should own copyright, partly going back to principles 
> and partly considering practical questions of particular rights 
> important to the various stakeholders. I am not going to 
> pretend that all differences were resolved. We still disagreed 
> - sometimes fundamentally - on some matters in both the JISC/PA 
> discussions and in the Zwolle Group, but for most of the time 
> these were constructive discussions from which we all learned a 
> great deal. Sally's contribution helped this process along in a 
> way which was very positive, and I thank her for it. We still 
> face many difficult issues in the changes taking place in 
> scholarly communication and I hope that we can talk about those 
> issues in the constructive way we talked about the difficult 
> issues of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
>
> Sally, I thank you and wish you a happy retirement!
>
> Fred Friend
> JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
> E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk