Profiles Encouraged

ATG PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Scott Ahlberg

COO Research Solutions / Reprints Desk 16350 Ventura Blvd., Suite D #811, Los Angeles, CA 91436 Phone: (310) 477-0354 <sahlberg@reprintsdesk.com> How/where do I see the industry in five years: I expect to see more consolidation in scholarly publishing, but more decentralization in getting content to end users.

Deni Auclair

President/CEO Media Growth Strategies LLC 42 Walpole Street Dover, MA 02030 Phone: (508) 785-8384 <dauclair56@gmail.com> www.mediagrowthstrategies.com Born and lived: Born in Mt. Kisco, NY and, up to and including while in high school, lived in Brewster, NY; Arlington, VA; Cincinnati, OH; Woods Hole, MA; Naples, Italy; Troy, NY; Pittstown, NY; Cambridge, England. Early life: My father was a graduate biochemistry professor at Uni versity of Cincinnati and RPI, so we moved around as he changed jobs and went on sabbaticals. He also did genetics research (cloning) at the Rockefeller Institute in NYC and genetics-related marine biology at the Massachusetts Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole. We finally settled in Pittstown, NY when my family bought a 650-acre Century farm (meaning it had been in the same family for over 100 years). We started as a beef farm, raising Charolais and Herefords as well as horses, chickens, and geese. After our farm manager joined us, we went to dairy and had a herd of Holsteins until it was sold when my parents retired. I spent seven summers working on the hay wagons – long days of throwing hundreds of bales of hay. I learned a lot about hard work, discipline – and being stronger than the boys on the school bus! – during those years. I went to Albany Academy for Girls, the sister school to Albany Academy which had several notable attendees, but the most meaningful to me was Herman Melville. I did my thesis on him my senior year at Bates College, which I attended for three years, spending my junior year at University of Stirling in Scotland. Professional career and activities: I started my career work ing in Portland, ME for a team of industrial psychologists. I wanted to get into publishing, however, so after a summer taking the Stanford Publishing program, I moved to NYC and started as a Reader for the children’s book division at (what was then) Harper & Row, moving into the adult division after a year. After six months working as an editorial assistant, I was hired as assistant to Phyllis Grann, publisher at G. P. Putnam’s Sons. I was promoted to Senior Editor after two years – acquiring bestselling And So It Goes by Linda Ellerbee and working with notable authors like comedian George Burns, actress Elizabeth Taylor (her assistant, to be honest), Robin Cook, Dick Francis, Joe McGinnis, and many more. I decided, since I had played sports through high school and participat ed as much as I could in college (there were very few women’s teams at that time), that I wanted to be in the business of baseball so I interviewed with a bunch of baseball teams – and ended up as a Reporter (i.e., fact checker and sometimes supporting the Writers on stories) for Sports Illustrated. Not really what I wanted to do, but it was a fun experience for a little over a year. I returned to Putnam for a couple of years, worked for a sports media coach for a year, then got my MBA at NYU’s Stern School of Business while working again at Sports Illustrated, before joining what is known as a “vulture fund” as a buy-side analyst. (Vulture funds invest in distressed debt.) After six years, I got a job at Wiley doing M&A and that started my career in scholarly publishing. I worked at Wiley for 12 years, then joined JBJS as CFO. I then started my consultancy, Media Growth Strategies LLC (MGS) before joining Outsell. I was VP and Senior Analyst there for two and a half years, joined Delta Think as CFO and analyst for a year and a half, then restarted MGS. I am now very happily consulting and working with the wonderful people in scholarly communications on as many projects as possible! Family: I live with my eight cats and two dogs, am a widow of 15 years, and have a brilliant 43-year old stepson who is an attorney in NYC. In my spare time: I am treasurer for USA Boxing, Metro (USA Boxing is the national governing body for amateur boxing, under the aegis of the USOPC, and Metro is the NYC chapter) and the National Golden Gloves of America. I am also Vice President of the USA Boxing Foundation. I have been involved in amateur boxing as an official and administrator (all volunteer) for 36 years – they are like family to me. I am also treasurer of The Cat Connection, based in Waltham, MA. Basically, being involved with boxing and cats, I’m a member of the two craziest groups of people you can find. Favorite books: Too many to list… I listen to audiobooks constantly, and am currently reading Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. Pet peeves: Drivers who don’t signal when they turn, malapropisms, sloppy writing in a professional setting. Also, people who create drama when it just isn’t necessary.

Phi losoph

y: Be happy. Most memorable career achi evement: Working on the Black well acquisition while at Wiley. Goal I hope to achi eve five years from now: Being ready to semi-retire. How/where do I see the industry in five years: Pretty much where it is today, while recovering from this coronavirus pandemic. With COVID-19, it seems as if life has been put on hold. Combine that with an industry that moves relatively slowly, and five years is a drop in the bucket when it comes to time.

Marshall Breeding

Independent Consultant Library Technology Guides 2512 Essex Place Nashville, TN 37212 Phone: (615) 479-0392 <marshall.breeding@librarytechnology.org> https://librarytechnology.org

Sh ort professional

breeding/

bi o:

https://librarytechnology.org/marshall

Full c.v.:

https://librarytechnology.org/marshallbreeding/cv/

Barbara Casalini

President Casalini Libri Via Benedetto da Maiano 3 50014 Fiesole Italy Phone: +39 055 50181 Fax: +39 055 5018 469 <barbara@casalini.it> www.casalini.it Born and lived: In Fiesole all my life. Early life: Only happy memories except for some Sunday morning German and French dictation exercises my father painstakingly bestowed on me. Professional career and activities: Casalini Libri, for as long as I can remember. Family: One husband, two daughters, three grandchildren. In all, we are also family to three rowdy dogs and two hefty cats that wander freely around the Torrossa grounds. In my spare time: I like to cook and bake for friends and family, watch old movies, read good novels and mysteries, avoid physical exercise if at all possible. Favorite books: Asterix (in French) to cheer me up. Pet peeves: People who complain when they have every reason not to, people who don’t show respect for others or for the environment. Phi losoph y: Look on the bright side. Most memorable career achi evement: Loving my job every day. Goal I hope to achi eve five years from now: To take a back seat (but of course being a back seat driver!) while the new generation goes full steam ahead. How/where do I see the industry in five years: Definitely more digital and more accessible, owing not only to recent events and the needs that have come to light, but also on the emerging work and devel opments in linked data and the conversion of library data to interconnect with and harness the potential of the structure of the semantic web. I like to think that there will be ever more communication and collaboration among all sectors of the community.

Lettie Y. Conrad

Publishing & Product Consultant LYC Consulting Ventura County, California <lettieconrad@gmail.com> https://www.linkedin.com/in/lettieyconrad/ Professional career and activities: Lettie brings nearly 20 years’ experience in scholarly publishing to her diverse portfolio of product research and development talents and passions. She is dedicated to help ing information organizations cultivate a user-centered, standards-compliant approach to digital publishing and academic programs. Her work history demonstrates a commitment to the dissemination of high-quality scholarly and professional publications that advance science and knowledge for the greater good, and transform the researcher experience. Lettie excels in driving optimum content discovery and access of academ ic content platforms, leveraging her R&D experience in web analytics, user experience, information architecture, SEO, institutional discovery, metadata standards, and semantics. In her 10 years with SAGE Publishing, Lettie played a key role in establishing product management expertise and user-centered product lifecycles and market research routines. She was instrumental in launching user-centered web and mobile products, driving research and analysis that enabled evidence-based product management to maintain outstanding quality of SAGE platforms. In my spare time: Currently, Lettie is a North American Editor for Learned Publishing and is a “chef” with the SSP’s Scholarly Kitchen blog. Lettie has a master’s degree in Mass Communication from California State University, Northridge, and is currently an Information Science PhD candi date at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. Lettie enjoys organic gardening and drinking wine with her her husband in their Southern California home, ruled by Frida & Bonita, their two calico-tabby cats. Phi losoph y: We’re in this together!

Darrell W. Gunter

President and CEO Gunter Media Group, Inc. 298 Mathers Road, Ambler, PA 19002 Phone: (973) 454-3475 <d.gunter@guntermediagroup.com> www.guntermediagroup.com Born and lived: Born Atlantic City, NJ. Lived in Los Angeles, CA, Chicago, Il and South Orange, NJ. Early life: Growing up in Atlantic City, NJ with access to the boardwalk and beach was awesome. I worked in my family’s grocery store and had a paper route for the Philadelphia Bulletin. I played youth football with the Atlantic City Dolphins which led me to become a lifelong Miami Dolphin fan! In highschool I lettered in football and track and broke the school’s high jump record with a leap of 6’6”! Attending Seton Hall University was a phenome nal experience and I served many organizational posts. I also ran and won campus elections and won election to serve on the national board of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Oh, yes, I was the captain of the SHU Fencing team. Professional career and activities: During my high school years in addtion to the family grocery store, I worked for McDonalds and Mr. Best Car Wash. During my college years I worked at Jules Men’s shop which set the stage for a career in sales. Post college, I started my profes sional career at Xerox which led me to Dow Jones Financial Services and Elsevier. My entrepreneurial leanings opened me up to Collexis a semantic technology company. After Collexis was acquired by Elsevier, I joined AIP and sometime later formed Gunter Media Group, Inc., a management consulting firm. The grocery store experience certainly set the foundation for me to want to be in sales and a desire to help people. Family: Wife Deb, daughter Bailee. In my spare time: I love spending my time with my family and our 6 pets (3 dogs and 3 cats), light exercising, reading and watching thought provoking films. Favorite books: The Bible, Art of War, any novel by Tom Clancey. Pet peeves: Dishonest people. Phi losoph y: A man’s word is his bond. Most memorable career achi evement: Having my mom see me receive the Seton Hall University Many Are One Libraries Alumni Ser vice Award at their annual gala in 2008. Goal I hope to achi eve five years from now: To be part of a new development that will improve scholarly research. How/where do I see the industry in five years: The scholarly publishing industry, in my humble opinion, will have a complete new busi ness model that will move subscriptions to open access and be supported by advertising and data analytics. Data Analytics is the new oil! This predict ed shift would truly open scholarly research to the global research community. Considering faster computiing power and Internet speed, we can expect to see the research community achieve new developments in record time. continued on page 83

Christopher Lee

Electronic Resources Librarian Utah State University USU Merrill-Cazier Library 3000 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322-3000 <Christopher.lee@usu.edu> Born and lived: I was born in UT and lived there most of my life ex cept for 6 years in California. Professional career and activities: I started working in librar ies as a student worker for Interlibrary Loan at Utah State University. I went on to be an Interlibrary Loan staff member at California Polytechnic State University for 6 years. I am now back at Utah State University as the Electronic Resources Librarian. Family: Spouse and 2 wonderful daughters. In my spare time: I read, watch Netflix, and play video games. Favorite books: Harry Potter series for fiction and Educated for non fiction. Most memorable career achi evement: Winning a work Hallow een costume contest as Conan the Librarian. Goal I hope to achi eve five years from now: Tenure. How/where do I see the industry in five years: The corona virus has stressed the importance of electronic resources and the need to move more and more online. While I think library buildings and print materials are here to stay, I do see more and more services going entirely online to make space for studying or community events.

Casalini Libri

Corporate Headquarters: Via Benedetto da Maiano 3 Operational Offices & Logistics: Via Faentina 169/15 50014 Fiesole (Florence), Italy Phone: 055 50181 • Fax: 055 5018201 • www.casalini.it Officers: CEO Michele Casalini, President Barbara Casalini. ing print and electronic publications in all formats and subject areas. We specialise in titles from Italy, Spain, the Vatican City, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Greece and Portugal, with a particular focus on the Humanities and Social Sciences. Core markets/clientele: Libraries. Number of employees: 96 ing prog ram: Established by Mario Casalini in 1958, Casalini Libri is recognised as one of the leading suppliers of publications and bibliographic data from across Southern Europe to libraries and institutions worldwide. We provide an efficient and personalised service for libraries, combining the supply of information and publications with a range of solutions that fa cilitate selection, acquisition and processing workflows. The Torrossa digi

Abigail Wickes

Electronic Resource Management Librarian Duke University Duke University Libraries Durham, NC 27708-0187 Phone: (919) 660-6939 <abigail.wickes@duke.edu> Professional career and activities: I studied English and Film Theory at the University of Rochester before getting my MLS from UNC-Chapel Hill. I started my early career in scholarly publishing, doing marketing analysis and content discovery management at Oxford Univer sity Press, then transitioned back to the library side of things as the ERM Librarian at Duke. Family: I have an awesome husband, a fabulous preschool-aged daugh ter, and a scrappy elderly mini-dacshund. Favorite books: Lately anything by Connie Willis, Grady Hendrix, Rainbow Rowell. Pet peeves: Pedantry. How/where do I see the industry in five years: This is the hardest question on the profile template, and also difficult to answer mid-pandemic (filling this out in April 2020.) I think there may be an industry shift towards full text syndication or ag gregation by subject, like JSTOR, PubMed, or LexisNexis/WestLaw, in a wider range of subject areas. These will be similar to A&I services in that they will be discipline specific, but they’ll have full text rather than just citations and abstracts so discovery can also be delivery. We know from reports from Renew Publishing that researchers already find A&I services extremely valuable. If these were larger scale, researchers would still benefit from that richer, discipline specific metadata subject experts can

COMPANY PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Key products and services: Sourcing, cataloguing and supply

History and brief descrip tion of your company/publish

layer on, but with access and delivery incorporated (somehow!) as well. tal library aims to offer institutions a resource that gives access to scholarly eBooks and ejournals.

Is there anythi ng else that you thi nk would be of in

terest to our readers? As a major bibliographic agency for data regarding European publications, we are driven by the determination to anticipate the changing needs of the market and are currently working on the development of solutions for the effective use of Linked Data and BIB FRAME within libraries. We are a partner in the Share-VDE collaborative initiative. Following the renewal of the Torrossa digital bookstore in 2019, our in vestments in technological innovation continue with, most recently, a new look company website and enhanced management interface for publish ers. The project is ongoing and further, exciting developments will be announced later in the year.

Lean Library

Hofplein 20 3032 AC Rotterdam <info@leanlibrary.com> leanlibrary.com Key products and services: Library Access, Library Assist, Li brary Alternatives.

Core markets/clientele: Academic, Non-Academic, Corporate, Public Libraries. Number of employees: 10

History and brief descrip tion of your company/publish

ing prog ram: Johan Tilstra is a former Program Manager at Utrecht University whose passion lies within the library world and the need for libraries to remain current, useful and dependable. As Lean Library’s Founder and CEO, Johan Tilstra, came up with the idea for a browser extension when Utrecht University had the “Thinking the Un thinkable: A Library without a Catalogue” initiative. The groundwork for the idea of not offering a catalogue was the conviction that libraries should shift their focus from discovery to delivery. This conviction is based on an evident change in users’ behavior with re gards to where and how they are starting their research, as pinpointed in many talks, articles and blog posts. Therefore, it’s vital for libraries to revolutionize the library environment to adjust and capitalize on this behavioral shift of their users. Working closely with students and researchers, Johan recognized this shift and worked tirelessly, creating a prototype and developing it into a fullfledged extension that puts libraries directly in their end users’ preferred workflow. Armed with his vision, he set out to start Lean Library, which once depen dent on early adopters, is now a powerful force of change in the library landscape. Lean Library, via browser extension, simplifies access to library services while increasing library visibility with branding and custom messaging.

Media Growth Strategies LLC

42 Walpole Street Dover, MA 02030 Phone: (508) 785-8384 www.mediagrowthstrategies.com Officers: Deni Auclair, CEO/President Association membership s, etc.: SSP Key products and services: Consulting services to the scholarly information industry. Core markets/clientele: Scholarly publishers. Number of employees: 1

History and brief descrip tion of your company/publish

ing prog ram: I decided I wanted to try working for myself – and I really

Duke University Libraries

411 Chapel Drive Durham, NC 27708 Phone: (919) 660-5870 https://library.duke.edu/ Backg round/hi story: https://library.duke.edu/about Number of staff and responsibi lities: https://library.duke. edu/about/directory/browse/all like myself as a boss! I have been happily running MGS for three years and while being a consultant can be challenging at times – looking for proj ects and not knowing what’s coming next – I absolutely love it. The diversity of clients and projects, talking to the really smart people in our industry, and learning every day – that’s what makes the challenge of bringing in new projects worthwhile. Market research/business intelligence and financial analysis are my favorite things to do, but I have enjoyed every project I’ve worked on, with no exceptions. As long as I’m learning, I’m happy.

Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI)

Contact: Susie Winter <Susie.winter@springernature.com> More information and full list of members can be found on our website, coming soon at www.Snsi.info.

History and brief descrip tion of your company/publish

ing prog ram: SNSI is an initiative bringing together publishers and institutions to solve cyber challenges threatening the integrity of the scientific record, scholarly systems and the safety of personal data. Its members include large and small publishers, learned societies and university press es and others involved in scholarly communications.

Third Iron, LLC

PO Box 270400 St Paul, MN 55127 Phone: (855) 649-7607 https://thirdiron.com Officers: Kendall Bartsch, John Seguin, Karl Becker Key products and services: LibKey Discovery, LibKey Link, Lib Key Nomad, libkey.io, BrowZine. Core markets/clientele: Academic, hospital, corporate and gov ernment libraries. Number of employees: 25

History and brief descrip tion of your company/publish

ing prog ram: Third Iron technologies keep the library at the center of the research process, whether the point of discovery is library services or on the open web. Our services simplify and expedite getting to full text, freeing up countless hours of researcher time, reducing help desk and ILL burden, and meeting the expectations of students, faculty and researchers.

Is there anythi ng else that you thi nk would be of inter

est to our readers? Third Iron is private, self-funded company whose products are designed to meet the needs of libraries and the users

LIBRARY PROFILES ENCOURAGED

who rely on them.

Does your lib rary have an ILS or are you part of a col

laborative ILS ? Aleph. Do you have a discovery system? Summon.

Subscribe to The Charleston ADVISOR Today!

6180 East Warren Avenue • Denver, CO 80222 Phone: 303-282-9706 • Fax: 303-282-9743

The Charleston ADVISOR

Critical Reviews of Web Products for Information Professionals

comparative reviews...reports from the field...interviews with industry “The Charleston Advisor serves up timely editorials and columns, standalone and comparative reviews, and press releases, among players...opinion editorials... other features. Produced by folks with impeccable library and comparative reviews...reports from the field...interviews with industry publishing credentials ...[t]his is a title you should consider...” — Magazines for Libraries, eleventh edition, edited by Cheryl LaGuardia with consulting editors Bill Katz and players...opinion editorials... Linda Sternberg Katz (Bowker, 2002). Over 750 reviews now available

Web edition and database provided with all subscriptions

Unlimited IP filtered or name/password access

Full backfile included

Comparative reviews of aggregators featured

Leading opinions in every issue

$295.00 for libraries $495.00 for all others

❏ ✓ Yes! Enter My Subscription For One Year. ❏ Yes, I am Interested in being a Reviewer.

Name____________________________________________ Title ________________________________________ Organization __________________________________________________________________________________ Address_______________________________________________________________________________________ City/State/Zip _________________________________________________________________________________ Phone ____________________________________________Fax ________________________________________ Email________________________________________Signature ________________________________________

Back Talk

from page 86

by providers who mean well, while also needing to consider their own convenience and advantage And the gifts are ephemeral — promised to expire on June 30 or some other early date, promised, that is, to go away and leave us.

As I’ve been working on this column (since April 15th) and living through lockdown, that June 30 deadline approaches. What should we expect next? [And as I write this, a few publishers have just extended their free offerings to August.] Will there be bold announcements of the “it’s safe to go back in the water so we’re pulling the plug” variety? Will librarians and others push back and insist on longer-term concessions? Most people agree that the virus conditions and fallouts won’t go away for a long time.

Do we go back and undo the work we’ve done to make these temporary resources useful? Web pages would be deleted, LibGuides cut back, etc. User expectations — or at least hopes — will have to be dashed just when we’re all discovering that the budgetary world of 2020-2021 isn’t going to be even as happy a place as, in its limited way, it has been in 2018 and 2019.

In short, we’re all learning that nothing about the pandemic and nothing about responding to the pandemic is just going to magically go away. The new temporary generosity and venturesomeness we’ve experienced reveal the flaws in a system of information provision that isn’t as universal, transparent, and accessible as we need it to be. Who’s going to step up to the challenge and find ways for us to come out of these times better off than our readers and we were before? Wrapping up this piece on Memorial Day weekend 2020, I have to say that the answers elude me.

Considering Games ...

from page 69

So, if this pandemic has taught me anything, beyond the joys of going to work in my underwear, it is a new appreciation of face meetings in the real. Sure, you don’t get all the personality telling Zoom features. But you do get… Wait a second. I just remembered that chat feature which allows you to pass detailed notes — undetected — during a meeting. Never mind. I think I do like Zoom meetings after all. Isn’t this 21st century just the greatest?

Rumors

from page 49

To finish up, I have to confess that I have suddenly become obsessed with rare book collecting. This is strange since I have never owned a rare book or been a special collections librarian. I will admit, though, that the very first Charleston Conference in 1980 began as a rare books conference with the likes of Jake Chernovsky of A.B. Bookman’s Weekly (long defunct because of the internet), Paul Koda Rare books librarian at UNC-Chapel Hill back then and several others. Anyway, I got into this all again when I read a review of a book called Bluffing Texas Style (U of Oklahoma Press, 2020) by Michael Vinson, a rare book dealer. I bought it immediately. Next I got into The Lost Gutenberg by Margaret Leslie Davis (Tarcher/Perigee, 2019). I highly recommend both books! I have even devoted a special bookshelf to my growing collection of rare book collecting. Please send suggestions. Yr. Ed.

Back Talk — Carpe Diem – Seizing Pandemic Opportunities?

Column Editor: Ann Okerson (Advisor on Electronic Resources Strategy, Center for Research Libraries) <aokerson@gmail.com>

These are head-spinning days. On the one hand, it’s as if someone pushed the pause button on the world and everything has gone into suspended animation. On the other hand, an invisible enemy is loose among us, powerful and untraceable. Are these the best of times or the worst of times? Where will we be in six months? And of course the network world doesn’t just terrify and inform us, but it also distracts us. Netflix and other providers have had to scale back the speed at which they feed our binge-watching habits because there are so many of us at home, in suspended animation, browsing for distraction and amusement. Will we stay the course watching Schitt’s Creek and its reverse Beverly Hillbillies in their tiny town in Canada? Stay tuned!

For those who work in the world of library collections, it’s just as head spinning. Suddenly, whether on request from librarians or goodwill from information providers, we have jumped into an age of even more plenty — of information. The global drama is being played out in every form of media ever invented, and we can spend whole days sorting, scanning, and sifting through the welter of information about the COVID-19 crisis — and of course, much more besides. Never have so many had access to so much information about something so small and so dangerous.

Our readers turn back to their computers and find that their research li

brary is offering a COVID-19 resource page — only to discover that there’s some COVID-19-specific information, but there’s a lot more. It’s a welter of variously themed information resources, some they’ve heard of, some not, all concentrated in a menu listing or two and turned in their direction like a great info-firehose. Publishers have leapt to show social concern (and marketing savvy) by opening up assorted resources that are often available only via expensive licenses and making them available for the duration of the emergency. For example, in the commercial sector, publishers such as De Gruyter offer a huge aggregation of near current and backlist university press books — can Princeton Press really be offering 6,000 titles for free? Various information providers are offering periodical indexes, research databases, full text journals, and more — some are freely open to all, some to subscribers, others only to members of specific libraries or consortia. On the non-profit side, for example, The Internet Archive has a National Emergency Library for the world, while HathiTrust offers Emergency Temporary Access Services for its members. And all these riches are offered with shortterm expiration dates estimating when the emergency will lift. So what do we make of this chaotic and erratic information environment? We can draw a few lessons:

31 2 11 19 13 43 5

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX

Access ble Arch ves ACS P bl c ns A M he D l AIP P bl sh n A er c n C lle e f Phys c ASME ATG

ns 85 8 87 C 49 E 3 37 88

The Ch rles n A v s r The Ch rles n Re r l S r n H rb r L b Press ery-Pr GOBI L br ry S l ns INF ORMS M es L br ry Serv ce 27 7 9 15 R 21 S 17 SL 23 The MIT Press OSA – The O c l S c e y Pr jec MUSE ese rch S l ns / Re r n s Desk AGE P bl sh n

ACK Inc r r e The W ll S ree J rn l

For Advertising Information Contact: Toni Nix, Ads Manager, <justwrite@lowcountry.com>, Phone: 843-835-8604, Fax: 843-835-5892.

It’s mainly up to the librarians to figure out how to translate this transitory Wild West availability successfully, so that information reaches those end-users who will benefit from it. Every publisher wants to show how generous theyare, but readers care less about specific publishers or their generosity: they will use what they need and they will look first of all for content relevant to their teaching, learning, or research. There’s the non-trival question of how much work librarians can imagine doing to make accessible all this “free” information. They (we) do some of the usual work: create websites, LibGuides, instructional sessions (on Zoom, of course), and liaison outreach to faculty.

We re-learn the lesson that many organizations have already discovered over time — information being made available for free is only the first part of the picture. For example, almost 20 years ago when Research4Life (https://www.research4life. org/) began offering to emerging nations access to hundreds and thousands of free or very inexpensive high quality journals, the founders quickly learned that turning on and pointing the fire hose was only the beginning — and that it was necessary to spend a fair amount of time with the users, conducting training and workshops and managing the sudden “free” riches. Training in use of e-resources continues unabated to this day not only in R4L, but also in libraries worldwide. [By the way, there’s one thing that will not work optimally in accessing these “free” resources, and that is reliance on a search engine. For specific searches, tools like Google and Google Scholar can be very powerful, but the user doesn’t learn about the underlying structure of information resources nor how to understand the riches and possibilities of a given site, when all she sees are some hits from that site mixed in with many others on a relevance-keyed search.]

And then there’s what may be the most important lesson of all in this time of resource deluge: ephemerality is a critical weakness. The offerings readers are now being given are haphazard and as full of holes as Swiss cheese, not chosen by any rational selection process, but instead offered continued on page 85