Reflection on “The Acquisitions Librarian as Change Agent in the Transition to the Electronic Library”

Abstract

Over the years since Library Resources and Technical Services began publication in 1957, many fine papers have appeared in the journal. From time to time, we will republish an important paper that contributed in a significant way to the theory of the field or that identified and addressed a unique problem. These papers will be published with a new introduction that revisits the themes of the original paper Acquisitions Librarian as Change Agent in the Transition to the Electronic Library, by Ross Atkinson, first appeared in 1992 (36, no. 1 [January 1992]: 7-20). This essay received the Best of LRTS Award for papers published in 1992. In it, Atkinson investigated the role of the librarian in handling new technology and proposed new functions and relationships for within the library. We have asked Atkinson to reconsider the ideas he explored in his original paper His new introduction proceeds the award-winning essay. --Editor The premise of this paper on the acquisitions librarian as change agent, originally presented in 1991, was that acquisitions, of all the major library functions, was arguably the least prepared for the transition to a primarily digital information environment. At the same time, however--so the argument went--acquisitions was uniquely positioned, because of its specialized business skills and experience, to lead the way in what we would later call reappropriation, that is, the academy's resumption of the responsibility for the publication or distribution of some or all of the scholarly information it produces. (Today, in the era of SPARC [Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition], High Wire Press, Project Muse, Project Euclid, E-Scholarship--just to name a few--the view that information services has a responsibility for the entire process of information exchange from the writer to the reader is self-evident; twelve years ago, however, it was still a relatively vague abstraction.) The paper suggested, therefore, that should make preparations to abandon its traditional operation and to assume a new role in the library and the academy as publication facilitator. I feel that someone else wrote this paper--because I was someone else in 1991--and I infer now that the person who wrote it was making three implicit assumptions: * Most scholarly publications would shift online relatively soon (the floodgates will open)--certainly well before the end of the 1990s. * In such a primarily online environment, the traditional function of would become increasingly superfluous. Only an accountant would really be needed, to pay the bills. * The whole process of scholarly communication, especially those areas that were dominated by commercial science publishers, was defective--and would likely collapse, sooner or later, of its own weight. It was important that the library be prepared, therefore, with alternative methods that scholars would be able to use to exchange information effectively. All three of these assumptions have obviously turned out to be entirely mistaken. While the writer of the paper acknowledged the conservative nature of the academy, he totally overestimated the speed with which the academic community would move to electronic publishing. I am sure he would have been shocked in 1991 to learn that over 80 percent of Cornell's materials budget in 2003 was still being spent on traditional materials. He would probably have been somewhat less surprised, although certainly disappointed, to learn that the real leadership in the transition to electronic scholarly publishing has been provided (admittedly with some notable exceptions) by commercial journal publishers--and that they have brilliantly contrived new methods (licensing, bundling) to increase their revenues in the online environment beyond even what they had managed to achieve in the era of print publishing. One (admittedly obvious) expectation in the paper that certainly has turned out to be true is that books would move much more slowly online than journals. …