reviews Book Reviews 385 385 Book Reviews The Economics of Information in the Net- worked Environment. Eds. Meredith A. Butler and Bruce R. Kingma. Wash- ington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 1996. 217p. $40. alk. paper. ISBN 0-918006-29-5. LC 96-21222. Is higher education pricing itself out of the marketplace? So warned the key- note speaker, Mario Morino, at the Eco- nomics of Information in the Networked Environment Conference held in Wash- ington, D.C., in 1995. This is one of many difficult questions raised in this chal- lenging set of papers. These proceedings paint a troubled future for libraries and the associated scholarly publishing fields; we are caught in a downward, catch-22 eco- nomic cycle. As scholarly journals in- crease their prices, libraries with shrink- ing budgets are forced to cancel them. With a smaller audience, the publisher must then increase prices, forcing more library cancellations. This cycle has cre- ated 10 to 18 percent increases in jour- nal prices for more than ten years. To address this problem, a host of interesting pilot projects were pre- sented. Richard Rockwell, from the In- ter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, spoke of a “blended support strategy” for finding diverse funding sources to keep his nonprofit service economically viable. In another pilot project, JSTOR is at- tempting to digitally archive the journal Ecology with plans to sell access to li- braries. In this pay-as-you-go model, li- braries no longer will have to store massive runs of journals. Collaboration was offered as an al- ternative by several speakers. Methods for developing the ambitious National Digital Library were discussed by Hiram Davis. The Library of Congress is at- tempting to put five million digitized pieces of Americana online by the year 2000. Burkart Holzner discussed the ob- stacles he encountered dur- ing efforts to rescue the be- leaguered foreign acquisi- tions program at the Univer- sity of Pittsburgh. The economics of e- journals were addressed by Lorrin Garson. Many scholarly societies are interested in pursuing this medium. However, as both Garson and Noll pointed out, 80 percent of the cost of producing a journal is incurred in de- veloping the first copy. Only 20 percent of cost is associated with distribution, be it via print or online. The ownership versus access debate was, once again, addressed at this con- ference. Bruce Kingma presented the results of a study that once again showed that access is cheaper than ownership, but he also found that coop- eration has a price. Michael McPherson questioned the economics of a $30 in- terlibrary loan (ILL) transaction when university presses have been forced to raise the price of their scholarly mono- graphs as libraries cut purchases and use ILL to acquire titles. How does this make sense, he asks, when both librar- ies and university presses are owned by the same masters? In the end, ILL is at best a stopgap measure that will buy time but not resolve the underlying eco- nomic problems. Many speakers addressed the “volun-teerism” model currently in vogue on the Internet. Some speakers, such as Hal Varian, were relatively op- timistic about voluntary efforts. James O’Donnell spoke about how he has suc- cessfully published the low-overhead e- journal Bryn Mawr Classical Review, but he concludes by saying this model can- not be made universal. As Rockwell 386 College & Research Libraries July 1997 asks, how long will host institutions be willing to pay the price for these volun- tary efforts? Many speakers mentioned that for volunteerism to be successful, different models of rewarding and pro- moting scholars will have to become in- stitutionally acceptable. Quite a few papers offered over- views of how the economics of infor- mation work. Paul Evans Peters spoke about “the value chain” and changing the way scholarly information is handled. Varian presented the concept of “information objects.” An information object is an encrypted copy of a journal that automatically sends e-cash to pub- lishers when accessed. Other speakers raised concerns that the pay-as-you-go model could have negative effects on academic openness and information- sharing. I wonder what the attitude of the at- tendees was after this conference. Readers of these papers are likely to come away discouraged. As Richard West said, our current model of provid- ing access to scholarly information is not sustainable. The pilot projects dis- cussed in these papers have limited expandability, the costs of collaboration and cooperation are all too clear, inter- library loan can only do so much, and volunteerism is currently not rewarded in academia. There are no easy answers. We need to reinvent the scholarly communica- tion process, including rules for faculty advancement, publisher/library rela- tions, and the entire culture of the schol- arly world. No small task.—Valerie J. Horton, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Navigating among the Disciplines: The Li- brary and Interdisciplinary Inquiry. Ed. Carole L. Palmer, Library Trends 42 (fall 1996): 129–366. Also available as an individual volume from the Univer- sity of Illinois, Graduate School of Li- brary and Information Science, 1996. 238p. $18.50. ISSN 0024-2594. LC 54- 62638. Many crosscurrents complicate the work of a librarian seeking to provide accurate, timely, and comprehensive- for-the-purpose information on behalf of others, or for devising information systems that facilitate an information seeker’s individual inquiry. This has ever been so, and the current environment of changing information technology has made it, in some ways, even more so. When interdisciplinary inquiry is added to the mix, the complications in- crease. In keeping with Library Trends’ long-established policy of exploring currently relevant themes in depth, Carole L. Palmer has brought together an impressive group of eleven schol- ars and practicing academic librarians to consider the nature of interdiscipli- nary scholarship and its impact on the daily work of people seeking to support the scholarly efforts of others. The es- says reflect a variety of points of view and levels of analysis. Space limitations of this review do not permit a detailed examination of each of the essays, and to single out a few individuals’ work would do a disservice to the other con- tributors’ equally valuable presenta- tions. Although there is a good bit of over- lap among the following categories, a rough classification can be made for the subject emphases of the book. The first five essays deal with the background and current context of the nature of in- quiry in the overlapping subject areas between and among “classic” bound- aries of disciplines; the dynamic inter- play of integration and specialization; the “hybrid vigor” of investigations that cross over these boundaries; and the problems resulting from the more slowly changing classification systems, controlled vocabularies, and indexing approaches that have been devised to describe the “aboutness” of millions of “works.” << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 1 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo true /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts false /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 151 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 151 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 600 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.16667 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU (IPC Print Services, Inc. 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