[DCRM-L] Future publication of DCRMs

[Jackie Dooley]

The writing is clearly on the wall that printed DCRMs are soon to be a thing
of the past, and it sounds like nobody has a problem with that. Huzzah for
open access! If RBMS is the only entity involved in production, then the
incredible amounts of time that you all spend can happily be added to your
karma count instead of any energy being expended being frustrated that
somebody else is trying to make a profit (or even just break even) from your
expert volunteer labor.

A few observations and opinions:

Who should be the publisher going forward?: Does it matter whether LC is the
publisher? Do the manuals lose any cache¹ if it¹s not LC? I¹m guessing the
answers to both are no.

Communicating up the RBMS food chain: Richard is right‹the Publications
Committee should be in the loop at this point. Should RBMS be the publisher?
Do they care about printed versions? Would ACRL care what happens? My
assumption would be that ACRL would have no interest in being the publisher
if RBMS only wants to make the DCRMs available as open-source content, but
it¹s not at all too soon for your Pubs experts, maybe even the Executive
Committee, to weigh in. The cataloging standards are one of RBMS¹s flagship
enterprises! Ceasing print and/or restricting their availability are big
issues. Clearly availability via the Catalogers¹ Desktop alone doesn¹t serve
the community.

DCRM(G) in print: I suggest that someone ask Peter Seligman to be more
specific about exactly who/what would be affected by an 11th-hour
cancellation of DCRM(G) in print. If the special collections cataloging
community doesn¹t give a hoot about print, who does? Has there been
publicity already? Are the presses standing by? Has a contract been signed
that gives them the right to publish? Do they care whether they publish?
Might the powers at LC be perfectly happy to have it cease to be their
responsibility if they thought about it rationally?

Selling off print runs so existing titles can be available as open access:
It would be good to get data from LC about how many copies they¹re selling
of each title annually (hence what the income is), and how many copies are
left in the print runs. Presumably this is public information. It¹s
conceivable that they spend more money managing inventory than they selling
copies. I¹m pretty familiar with the Society of American Archivists¹
publication practices and can report that they sometimes have a fire sale on
pubs that no longer sell very many copies annually (no idea what the cutoff
is). Maybe there¹s ALA/ACRL practice to be cited: did they care how many
copies of Paper Terms were still on hand after 30 years of selling only
five/year before they let you put them online for free access? :) Is Peter a
decision maker or a messenger?

Best wishes to all‹ Jackie

-- 
Jackie Dooley
Program Officer, OCLC Research
& President,
Society of American Archivists

dooleyj at oclc.org
949.492.5060 (work/home) -- Pacific Time (GMT ­8)
949.295.1529 (mobile)








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