[Eril-l] funding for DDA/PDA

[Rick Anderson]

Again, if what we’re concluding is that because overall circulation is falling, a) we should buy fewer print books, because b) it shows they are not valued by users, I think that’s a cognitive leap we should not be making.

To your knowledge, has anyone expressed that conclusion based purely on falling overall circulation numbers?


But I DON’T think it means that users don’t need good books, that librarians can’t make good decisions about choosing books, or that purchasing print books and even journals is an activity we can turn our backs on wholesale – and a lot of people do think that.

Can you cite any examples of librarians advocating the wholesale discontinuation of print acquisition? I spend a lot of time listening to and participating in the professional conversations around this issue, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone propose that. I don’t deny that there may be people out there taking that position, but I think they’d be pretty extreme outliers.


At ARLIS this spring I listened to a museum publisher talk about how most exhibition catalogs will never be produced as ebooks. My dean keeps floating the idea that we don’t need print journals, when we have quite a few art journals that are simply not available electronically for libraries.

Is your dean pushing you to cancel the art journals because they’re not available online?


I have a nearly complete manuscript I am working on with a colleague and plan to make the data available when I publish. The stats are for all firm-order and approval books purchased for the main circulating collection in each fiscal year from 2008-09 through 2013-14.

Great! It will be very interesting to see them. Thanks for your willingness to make them available.

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Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
rick.anderson at utah.edu
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