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Fair enough, 49 countries of the almost 200 on the planet have Inter-Library loans. Seems it may be about on-par with how many countries / populations are with

Fair enough, 49 countries of the almost 200 on the planet have Inter-Library loans. Seems it may be about on-par with how many countries / populations are without internet access. However, if we were to measure how much of the 49 countries' population truly had reasonable access to a library (within reasonable distance of their home) versus the total population who has access to the internet, I think we'd probably see that the internet is a far more sustainable, cheaper medium through which to transfer information. I may be mistaken on the above, but Google and Facebook (among others) have initiated large projects to bring internet access to all humans on the planet. I have not heard of similar projects (on similar scale) to bring more libraries to the world's population. (maybe I've missed this). I agree it's with the best of intentions that Inter Library Loans exist, but it seems quite dated in its thinking and really I see no reason to perpetuate this model. There are plenty of technologies out there these days which would allow digitization of media without consequences of rampant piracy.

dalke 11y ago
"I think we'd probably see that the internet is a far more sustainable, cheaper medium through which to transfer information." Absolutely true. Yet not that relevant. Data transfer cost isn't a major factor. The journals in my fields are all electronic. They no longer have paper distributions. As a result, the library no longer needs to store a physical copy, and people can retrieve a copy from their office instead of spending the hour to so to find it in the library and photocopy it. Great savings, right? This also means that the publisher, as copyright holder, can enforce access restrictions. For example, I (as the member of the public) can use the chemistry library of a large university about an hour away to get online access to some of these journals, without paying an extra fee. However, I am not allowed to print or make copies of these articles. Once upon a time, when everything was in paper, there was no way for the publisher to make that restriction. Precisely because information transfer is cheaper, it's now possible for the publisher to have more fine-grained control. As a result, ILL services have gotten worse. The rise of internet-based document retrieval services with limits on public (non-student/non-staff) access has meant that modern library users may need to travel more now, in order to visit a library with a given journal subscription, than 25 years ago, when an ILL request would have been possible. See http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/how-copyright-laws-prevent-easy-sharing-of-e-books-a-961333.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/how-copyright-... for "The Digital Paradox: How Copyright Laws Keep E-Books Locked Up." Quoting from it: > If a student in Freiburg wants to read the hard-copy version of a book from the university library in Basel, he or she can simply order it via an interlibrary loan. But if only an electronic version is available, interlibrary loans are generally not an option. The student has no choice but to climb into a train and head to Switzerland to read the book on a university computer. This sounds like the European version of the scenario you presented, only it was solved with the 'quite dated' ILL system, and exists with e-books. In passing you highlighted the underlying reason. The publishing companies would like it if the laws and technology were set up so that making a copy of a journal article at a library is "piracy" (I prefer the term 'copyright infringement'), unless they get paid for making the copy, and they as copyright holders should be in charge of determining what the price is. (The ILL system addressed copyright payments through RAND-like copyright clearance agreements.) Technology which makes it easier for copyright holders to control their copyright makes it harder for people to use the same materials. Either worthy people without the funds can't get access to a paper or there is 'rampant piracy'.
- datashovel 11y ago
  I'm definitely not a fan of DRM, but mentioned it since some people are concerned about it. I think, from the little I have read about this (with regard to the issues we've discussed here), academics in general is kind of screwed up given the power structures in place. This might sound like a broad generalization, and perhaps counter-intuitive, but I think for academic institutions to optimize themselves, they need to be thinking about how to re-arrange the incentive structure to align with incentives that drive a professor to write books and not with incentive structure of the markets. For example I think within the realm of academics it makes total sense to move toward a "pay for the person, not the product" model. With electronic distribution of the media, you get almost zero-cost of production and distribution (except of course for the time the author spends writing the book). This theoretically allows the industry to figure out how to cut the middle men and move those savings to the "talent" instead of finding more ways to bureaucratize the system further, eating away at the salaries of those who are producing the material in the first place. However, given the power structure my hunch is without an "(r)evolution" within those industries professors will continue to get a fraction of what they deserve.
  - dalke 11y ago
    As I am not an academic but rather an independent researcher working in industry, I have little useful to say about the academic power structure or its future. To get back to why I joined this thread, do you accept that your scenario of having to visit a state university library in person to read someone's "magnum opus" in book form is unlikely enough that it is more fanciful than meaningful? As you are also not an academic, I instead offer a better scenario. Many Masters and PhD dissertations are deposited in the univeristy library but otherwise unpublished, and even un-indexed. For some of those you may have to visit the library in person to see a copy or even learn that it exists.
    - datashovel 11y ago
      It sounds like you are more of an expert on Inter-Library Loans than I am. If, as it sounds like you are saying, I have access to all publications from all public and private (or maybe not private) libraries in all 49 countries that offer ILL. I'm assuming, for the purposes of this discussion, that all public and private? libraries in those 49 countries participate in this ILL program. As long as I have a library card to one of said libraries, then I think it's safe to say that a publisher who publishes a fixed number of books and sells them exclusively to libraries (public or private?) which may or may not be far away from where I live, is not as big of a problem as I originally thought. Technically one could argue that I have "access" to those books.

dalke 11y ago

"I think we'd probably see that the internet is a far more sustainable, cheaper medium through which to transfer information." Absolutely true. Yet not that relevant. Data transfer cost isn't a major factor. The journals in my fields are all electronic. They no longer have paper distributions. As a result, the library no longer needs to store a physical copy, and people can retrieve a copy from their office instead of spending the hour to so to find it in the library and photocopy it. Great savings, right? This also means that the publisher, as copyright holder, can enforce access restrictions. For example, I (as the member of the public) can use the chemistry library of a large university about an hour away to get online access to some of these journals, without paying an extra fee. However, I am not allowed to print or make copies of these articles. Once upon a time, when everything was in paper, there was no way for the publisher to make that restriction. Precisely because information transfer is cheaper, it's now possible for the publisher to have more fine-grained control. As a result, ILL services have gotten worse. The rise of internet-based document retrieval services with limits on public (non-student/non-staff) access has meant that modern library users may need to travel more now, in order to visit a library with a given journal subscription, than 25 years ago, when an ILL request would have been possible. See http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/how-copyright-laws-prevent-easy-sharing-of-e-books-a-961333.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/how-copyright-... for "The Digital Paradox: How Copyright Laws Keep E-Books Locked Up." Quoting from it: > If a student in Freiburg wants to read the hard-copy version of a book from the university library in Basel, he or she can simply order it via an interlibrary loan. But if only an electronic version is available, interlibrary loans are generally not an option. The student has no choice but to climb into a train and head to Switzerland to read the book on a university computer. This sounds like the European version of the scenario you presented, only it was solved with the 'quite dated' ILL system, and exists with e-books. In passing you highlighted the underlying reason. The publishing companies would like it if the laws and technology were set up so that making a copy of a journal article at a library is "piracy" (I prefer the term 'copyright infringement'), unless they get paid for making the copy, and they as copyright holders should be in charge of determining what the price is. (The ILL system addressed copyright payments through RAND-like copyright clearance agreements.) Technology which makes it easier for copyright holders to control their copyright makes it harder for people to use the same materials. Either worthy people without the funds can't get access to a paper or there is 'rampant piracy'.

datashovel 11y ago
I'm definitely not a fan of DRM, but mentioned it since some people are concerned about it. I think, from the little I have read about this (with regard to the issues we've discussed here), academics in general is kind of screwed up given the power structures in place. This might sound like a broad generalization, and perhaps counter-intuitive, but I think for academic institutions to optimize themselves, they need to be thinking about how to re-arrange the incentive structure to align with incentives that drive a professor to write books and not with incentive structure of the markets. For example I think within the realm of academics it makes total sense to move toward a "pay for the person, not the product" model. With electronic distribution of the media, you get almost zero-cost of production and distribution (except of course for the time the author spends writing the book). This theoretically allows the industry to figure out how to cut the middle men and move those savings to the "talent" instead of finding more ways to bureaucratize the system further, eating away at the salaries of those who are producing the material in the first place. However, given the power structure my hunch is without an "(r)evolution" within those industries professors will continue to get a fraction of what they deserve.
- dalke 11y ago
  As I am not an academic but rather an independent researcher working in industry, I have little useful to say about the academic power structure or its future. To get back to why I joined this thread, do you accept that your scenario of having to visit a state university library in person to read someone's "magnum opus" in book form is unlikely enough that it is more fanciful than meaningful? As you are also not an academic, I instead offer a better scenario. Many Masters and PhD dissertations are deposited in the univeristy library but otherwise unpublished, and even un-indexed. For some of those you may have to visit the library in person to see a copy or even learn that it exists.
  - datashovel 11y ago
    It sounds like you are more of an expert on Inter-Library Loans than I am. If, as it sounds like you are saying, I have access to all publications from all public and private (or maybe not private) libraries in all 49 countries that offer ILL. I'm assuming, for the purposes of this discussion, that all public and private? libraries in those 49 countries participate in this ILL program. As long as I have a library card to one of said libraries, then I think it's safe to say that a publisher who publishes a fixed number of books and sells them exclusively to libraries (public or private?) which may or may not be far away from where I live, is not as big of a problem as I originally thought. Technically one could argue that I have "access" to those books.