Are scholarly publishers ready for the future?
Kate Wittenberg, Beyond Google: What Next for Publishing? Chronicle of Higher Education, June 16, 2006 (accessible only U of Iowa affiliates and to other subscribers). Wittenberg is director of EPIC, the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia University. Excerpt:
While we [publishers] have been busy attending conferences, workshops, and seminars on every possible aspect of scholarly communication, information technology, digital libraries, and e-publishing, students have been quietly revolutionizing the discovery and use of information….If “digital natives” are the next audience for our scholarly resources, shouldn’t we be thinking about new ways to organize, store, and deliver our content?…As publishers, we are going to have to adapt quickly and creatively if we wish to remain true to our missions as information professionals and yet be relevant to users. Are we ready? Until now we have not only controlled the development of content, but also its discovery and delivery. We can call copyright foul when the books or articles or teaching tools we publish are used in ways we haven’t anticipated, and continue business as usual….Or we can think creatively about what comes next for publishing. Until now we have spent most of our energies in rear-guard actions: fighting Google over copyright infringement in its plans to digitize library books, for example. It’s time to think “beyond Google.”
Open Access News 6/12/06
