What are the University of Maryland Libraries doing about the "Scholarly Communication Crisis?"
The Libraries have been looking for ways to combat the crisis by exploring new models of providing access to information. The Libraries are doing this by making many new electronic resources available while balancing the need to continue to develop our paper-based resources. For example, we register the campus for electronic access to e-journals and other full text resources whenever this type of use is provided. When access to electronic resources is provided by the Libraries, appropriate entries are added to the online catalog, ALEPH, to allow the users of the library to easily know that the resources are available. The Libraries has been able to purchase a handful of key databases which provide full text articles, including Ebscohost, Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, LION, Project Muse, and Dow Jones Interactive. (See University of Maryland Electronic Databases for all available databases.) By investing time and money in making these resources available, the campus community gains opportunities to experience a range of models for distributing scholarly works as well as gaining access to the information resources.
Another way the Libraries are engaging in the development of a more supportive environment for scholarly communication is through membership in SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. SPARC, an initiative of the Association of Research Libraries, is comprised of over approximately 200 libraries and was created to foster competition in scholarly communication. More specifically, SPARC uses the collective spending of the member libraries to encourage publishers to produce cost-conscious, high-quality journals which directly compete with an existing high-cost title. Additionally, SPARC is working to promote author-friendly copyright policies and innovative uses of technology to disseminate scholarly information.
Like SPARC, JSTOR is a collaborative project funded by participant libraries including the University of Maryland Libraries. JSTOR was created to help alleviate the storage concerns of libraries by pledging to create digital versions of a large number of important scholarly journals. Additionally, this electronic archive allows for easier online access to large publication runs of specific journals. Although JSTOR does not provide online access to the most recent years of the journals, it provides access to the entire backfiles of over 360 titles. JSTOR is designed to be a self-sustaining project and the number of titles available will continue to grow.
As demonstrated by the participation in SPARC and JSTOR, the Libraries are seeking opportunities to work with other libraries to increase access to resources for the library users. The marketplace for scholarly publishing is changing rapidly and it is to our advantage as a community to maximize our roles by cooperating with those with shared interests. As an additional example, access to the Academic Universe database mentioned above was negotiated by an unprecedented coalition of U.S. libraries to ensure that fair pricing and broad access to the content was achieved. The University of Maryland Libraries will continue to seek out these types of partnerships and will look for additional ways to provide access to resources for the university community.
