Costs of electronic scholarly communication

Several PARS (Preservation and Reformatting Section) discussion
groups at the recent American Library Association midwinter
conference touched on the costs of electronic scholarly
communication.  This is a topic often discussed by Serialists at the
NASIG (North American Serials Interest Group) annual meeting and I
would recommend the proceedings of the June 1995 conference for all
kinds of information on the changing nature of scholarly
communication.  The proceedings are now available by gopher at
nasig.ils.unc.edu 6050.  They will also be published in the upcoming
NASIG issue of the journal, Serials Librarian.

In particular, I recommend an enlightening presentation by Charles
Lowry, Director of the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, which
describes two projects at CMU to mount full text journal articles in
electronic format. Mr. Lowry's economic analysis of those projects
indicates that maintaining electronic full text articles will be 16
times more expensive than maintaining those same articles in paper
format over the same time period. The text of his presentation
(minus the graphics) may be retrieved by gopher from
nasig.ils.unc.edu 6050.

Select:
    7. NASIG Conference Proceedings/
        1. 1995 NASIG Conference Proceedings/;
            5. Concurrent Sessions/
                3. Concurrent Set I: Electronic Publishing:
                    Hot projects in Progress/
                3. Projects Session 3/
                    1. Lowry, C.B.: Carnegie Mellon University and
                        University Microfilms...

This NASIG presentation is very similar to the presentation Mr.
Lowry gave at the Association of College and Research Libraries/New
England Chapter Fall Conference in October 1995.

Jane Hedberg
Serials Librarian and Preservation Administrator
Wellesley College Library
106 Central St.
Wellesley, MA 02181-8275
617-283-2103
Fax: 617-283-3690

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 9:60
                   Distributed: Monday, March 4, 1996
                        Message Id: cdl-9-60-016
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