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 | The LJ Academic Newswire Newsmaker Interview: Harvard University Librarian Robert Darnton
It's been an eventful, to say the least, start for Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton, who last spring took over for longtime librarian Sidney Verba. A historian of the book, Darnton has long been an involved and influential pioneer in examining new modes of scholarly communication. The LJ Academic Newswire recently caught up with Darnton to discuss libraries, scholarly communication, and of course his close involvement in crafting the historic open access mandate for Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).
LJ: To start, can you talk a little about your role in drafting and advocating for this open access (OA) motion?
RD: Formally, the motion was sponsored by Stuart Shieber as a member Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Of course, I'm a member of the faculty as well and could have been a co-sponsor. Stuart had been working on this even before I arrived at Harvard and the Provost had appointed a committee to examine these issues. When I arrived, I threw myself into this as one of my own, personal, top priorities. It's been a team approach. Stuart is a terrific expert in computer science, and I represent the more general university view, one that that applies to all of the schools, including the business and law schools.
This motion applies to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, but you mentioned Harvard's other schools-are there plans to expand this mandate to the professional schools?
My position is to spread the FAS motion spread throughout the whole university. That is going to be one of my top priorities in the weeks and months ahead. I will be discussing this with the law school, medical school and business schools.
Is the library prepared to handle what has to be the enormous job of capturing, maintaining, and distributing the output of Harvard's faculty?
Yes, we've already started. The technical or financial challenges here are not insuperable. That's more of a management issue than the more global questions of scholarly communication. We're hiring a programmer, a manager. We have a budget. We're starting an office of scholarly communication within the library and we're appointing an intra-faculty oversight committee. Stuart Shieber will be the director of this for the near future. There has been a lot of consultation with the university counsel. We're recruiting some law school students to man the phones as we expect a deluge of questions from faculty members about exactly what to do and how to do it.
There have been some who, although praising the mandate, have questioned how the opt-out provision will affect compliance. Was the opt-out necessary?
As someone who was part of the drafting of the motion, I was in favor of the opt-out. This motion is genuinely collective, and the faculty is committed to it, that is, everyone is enjoined to submit to it. I think it would be a mistake, however, to make it an absolute requirement because I don't think Harvard University should dictate to faculty members what they do with their intellectual production. I know there is an argument on the other side, and I don't dismiss that as silly. But I myself do not go for that argument. If we tried to be too bullying, it could create a counter-reaction.
Practically speaking, how much of a challenge is it for the library to fulfill its traditional mission and at the same to establish and maintain digital initiatives?
It's difficult, and it can be downright painful. The pressures, especially on a great research library, like Harvard University's with huge responsibilities and huge ambition takes different forms. Certainly one form is an increased need for acquiring all kinds of electronic datasets, and digital materials. The amount of money we've spent on this for the last ten to 15 years is impressive. And, of course, we have to keep up acquisitions of materials in classic codex form across a whole spectrum of learning-and there is more and more produced each year than in the previous year. Monograph inflation alone is at least nine percent each year, probably higher. We also buy a lot of books from Europe and the dollar has sunk disastrously in relation to the euro and the pound.
Current circumstances make it difficult to buy monographs while at same time taking the lead in accumulating electronic resources. How do we do all this? It's not easy. But libraries today are developing all kinds of new functions that are part of a new landscape of knowledge. Many people see libraries as dignified repositories of old-fashioned knowledge, the kind packaged in books, but libraries are also now at the forefront in developing new modes of scholarly communication.
Notably, this week, Indiana University library published its first e-journal. Have you had any discussions at Harvard about supporting this kind of endeavor?
I'd like to learn more about Indiana's experience. A big part of what I'm trying to do is to be better informed. Right now, we have no immediate plans to publish such journals, but I wouldn't exclude the possibility. At the moment, however, we are concentrating on the repository and making sure we get a high rate of deposit. As you know, compliance rates for repositories have been very low so a lot of our energy is going to be directed to persuading people to deposit their articles.
Books, print, university presses, and the Harvard mandate: look for Part II of the LJ Academic Newswire's Newsmaker Interview with Robert Darnton in Thursday's edition.
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Senator Arlen Specter Questions NIH Public Access Policy
As expected, publisher pushback against implementation of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) public access policy has apparently begun. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) ranking member of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, the subcommittee that oversees the NIH's budget, has written NIH director Elias Zerhouni questioning whether the NIH adequately considered the concerns of publishers in passing its mandatory public access mandate for 2008.
In his letter, Specter said he was concerned that the NIH has not taken "appropriate steps to seek out and take into account the advice of journal editors," arguing that notice of the public access mandate published by NIH in January, "did not outline a process for seeking the advice and comment of journal publishers, scientists, or any other interested parties." Specter's letter also closely echoed another concern voiced by publishers: whether the NIH proposal could be implemented consistently with copyright law.
With Specter's recent involvement, publishers' appear to be angling for more input on the NIH policy via a federal rule-making process. American Chemical Society spokesperson Glenn Ruskin told Chemical & Engineering News that the ACS, an opponent of the NIH public access policy, "welcomed" Specter's involvement and suggested that a federal rule-making process-which can be complex and protracted-was the best way to move forward on implementation.
Public access supporters have maintained that isn't necessary and asserted that publishers have been heard thoroughly on the subject. "The formulation of this policy has been transparent, straightforward, and has provided plenty of opportunities for all stakeholders to express their concerns, both to the NIH and to Congress," SPARC director Heather Joseph told the LJ Academic Newswire shortly after the mandate passed, noting that the NIH conducted an "extensive process of soliciting public opinion," receiving-and making public via its website-more than 6000 comments on the policy. As for copyright, the major academic library groups also released a brief last year positing that the NIH in no way conflicted with copyright.
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| At Last, SMU Announces Bush Library Deal
At long last, the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation has announced what has been expected for well over a year-that Southern Methodist University (SMU), in Dallas, TX, will be home to the George W. Bush Presidential Center, consisting of a library, museum, and an independent policy institute. The deal was unanimously approved Feb. 22 by the SMU Board of Trustees. The deal comes after lengthy negotiations: back on December 22, 2006, the Bush Library Site Selection Committee announced that SMU was the lone finalist. Construction is tentatively scheduled to be completed by 2016. The library and museum will be operated by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The $500 million fundraising campaign is the largest in history.
Plans call for the library to "contain documents and artifacts of the Bush Administration;" a museum with "permanent and traveling exhibits;" and the "independent" public policy institute, whose mission remains somewhat hazy-and of concern to critics. Susanne Johnson, a theology professor, told the Dallas Morning News that a policy institute does not belong on SMU's campus. "It's going to create an ethos where the students who are more progressive in terms of religion and politics will feel even further silenced." Dennis Foster, president-elect of the faculty senate, however, said the agreement was "something professors can work with."
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| NSF "Cyberinfrastructure" Director Daniel Atkins Wins Paul Evan Peters Award
The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and EDUCAUSE announced this week that Daniel E. Atkins, inaugural director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a distinguished professor in both the School of Information and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan, has been named the 2008 recipient of the Paul Evan Peters Award. The award recognizes "notable, lasting achievements in the creation and innovative use of information resources and services that advance scholarship and intellectual productivity through communication networks."
From 1992 to 1998, Atkins served as the founding dean of Michigan's School of Information, the first school of its kind in the nation that ARL and CNI officials said was "instrumental in shaping the concept of iSchools nationally." Named for CNI's founding director, the award will be presented during the CNI Membership Meeting in Minneapolis to be held April 7-8, 2008, where Atkins will deliver the Paul Evan Peters Memorial Lecture. Previous award recipients include Paul Ginsparg (2006), Brewster Kahle (2004), Vinton Cerf (2002), and Tim Berners-Lee (2000).
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Library Journal Academic Newswire
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