Reflections on the semester

I feel that I learned so much this semester. I wish I could look back at the pre-quiz we took on the first day, because I really knew nothing about electronic resources at the beginning of the semester.

It was so interesting and inspiring to learn how much librarians have taken upon themselves in this field. The entire spectrum of skills needed to manage electronic resources includes knowledge about copyrights and licensing, creating ERMS, developing and understanding standards, wrangling the linkage and searching issues, and keeping track of all the various and interrelated players. In addition, librarians not only manage the intricacies of ER, but also remain vigilant in ensuring that commercial publishers and aggregators don't call all the shots. In this age of intellectual property, publishers of digital content do their best to make it easy to follow their ownership model--for example, Apple and iTunes. Nothing is easier than getting all your music within the closed system of the iPod/iTune. Just a little click does it, which leads to consumer complacency. The same concept applies to scholarly information. Giant aggregators and publishing monopolies make it so much easier just to buy everything from them, and have it all fall into place at the click of a button, It is more convenient to purchase documents on a pay-per-view basis instead of negotiating licenses that allow interlibrary loans. It is safer to purchase copyright permission instead of risking infringement suits. It is less time-consuming to purchase all of the libraries information systems from one source than it is to work together to ensure interoperability by standards.

Electronic resources are at the heart of academic librarianship, and I think anyone who works in an academic library or uses an academic library is affected by the issues that surround electronic resources. Rising subscription costs, bundling of journals, technology monopolies, the loss of smaller independent publishers, restrictions on interlibrary loan and fair use, and erosion of the first sale doctrine are threats to academic scholarship and research, and are detrimental to the social good that copyright law was originally meant to protect. Just because it is easier to pay for privileges than it is to stand up for rights, doesn't mean we should give them up. The unique role of facilitating information exchange between commercial digital publishers and the public puts the electronic resource librarian in a key position to affect the future of digital rights.