[472] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Just-In-Time
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Public-Access Computer Systems For)
Thu Jun 11 12:03:39 1992
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1992 10:50:17 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
From: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
2 Messages, 100 Lines
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From: buchanan@wulib-jpb.wustl.edu (Paul Buchanan)
Subject: Just in Time/Just in Case
The discussion of "just in time" vs "just in case" has been interesting, but
seems incomplete. One key point is: no one can have material just in time
unless someone holds the material just in case. The electronic medium doesn't
change this simple fact; networks and computers just make it technically
possible to reduce the number of archives and facilitate the access process.
Since the archival function must still exist, libraries still need to address
the question of who will do it: libraries, commercial databanks, or perhaps
the publishers themselves. Unfortunately, libraries are not completely free
agents in this area; they are only a single component of a complex information
creation and dissemination enterprise. In many cases, we can only respond
to changes in our environment rather than re-making that environment to our
own desires; publishers and technologists frequently seem to have much more
power than libraries in "shifting the paradigm" (or fighting such a shift).
Although many libraries are trying various "just in time" document delivery
projects, I don't think these experiments have yet reached the critical mass
that will provoke a response from publishers and other economically interested
parties. I'm not sure many publishers (particularly commerical publishers)
are interested in a dissemination model where documents are published without
any subscription income, archived electronically, and then purchased "per
view" as individual users demand them. Frankly, such a system could have
some real benefit in demonstrating the true present value of much of the
explosion in scholarly publishing, but I'm not sure the parties with the
largest economic and political stake in this really want to know.
In any case, libraries and others in the information food chain still have to
decide who bears the cost (or foregoes the income) for archiving and indexing
for eventual retrieval not only by this generation of users, but by their
intellectual descendants throughout the future.
Paul Buchanan <buchanan@wulibs.wustl.edu>
Washington University Libraries
St. Louis, MO
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From: johnsonm@ohsu.EDU (Millard Johnson)
Subject: Just-in-time Pub-on-demand
There has been some recent discussion of just-in-time library
service. (I understand that this is really Publication-on-demand.)
We don't need to imagine what on-demand publication of
journal articles would look like, there are enough full-text
databases about to look at, but consider the following scenario for
on-demand publication of monographs:
1. A publisher publishes a 200 page book on phrenology (my
favorite subject), but instead of publishing 50,000 copies, (half of
them would go into a warehouse) he publishes only the number of
copies he knows he will sell in 2 months. But he presses 1 CD.
This is not a normal CD but a CD of the text in standardized text
markup format. The CD might go onto a shelf or into some very
jute box of some kind.
2. MARC cataloging data is "published."
3. The catalog record goes into every academic library's OPAC,
either directly or through some gateway to "the utility."
4. If the library does not buy the book the call number says
48 hr
book
or something like that. When the user at the OPAC calls for the
book he/she is prompted for the shipping address (home or office
or library). Then the system sends an order to the publisher who
either prints and binds a book or sends the markup text to a local
job printer. (The local printer could be the library)
5. The printed book is sent to the user with a notice to return it
to the library within N days. (The printing here is something like
a gang of 10 laser printers each printing 20 pages, a collator and a
conveyor belt to a binding machine.)
6. The status in the catalog changes to ON-ORDER and all of the
acquisition actions are triggered.
7. When the book comes back, it is cataloged and given a call
number.
The advantage to the publisher is that he/she does not deal with
expensive inventory. Nothing is remaindered and nothing goes
out of print. (A mixed blessing?)
The advantage to the library is that it does not buy books that are
never read. (My hunch is that this is a far more expensive
problem than we want our administration to know about.)
Most libraries would probably need to impose some restrictions
on the freedom of users to commit budget resources but that
would be simple enough to do and, it seems to me, that there is
plenty of room in this model to come up with a library service
that is overall, more responsive to users needs at any reasonable
level of funding. For example -- the real cost of ILL of a book is
probably above $10 (not counting the time of the borrower and
the time the book is unavailable to the loaning library) and ILL is
seldom used because it is just plain nasty. A mature on-demand
publication service could come close to ILL in actual cost and the
library would own a book that somebody once cared enough to
read, or at least, borrow.
I would rather risk failure than achieve it without risk.
Millard Johnson, PORTALS
johnsonm@ohsu.edu
