RE: Is it time to stop printing journals?

["Pikas, Christina K." <Christina.Pikas@jhuapl.edu>]

No.  My users have had us ILL for copies from things we've 
recycled because we have online.  Some of the SD scans are 
horrible and the scientist can't make out the table figures. In 
fact, we've had to ILL twice for one article because the first 
came from a microfilm which was worse.  We had to track down a 
library that would photocopy the print and send it snail mail.

We have at least two generations we have to serve here so we 
still need to serve both.  My users want to scan the print 
(browse, that is), then save the electronic, and print from the 
electronic and read that copy so they can mark it.

This is all in my opinion and does not reflect the policy of my 
place of work or our management.

Christina K. Pikas, MLS
R.E. Gibson Library & Information Center
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Greg Tananbaum
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 7:50 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Is it time to stop printing journals?

Scott Plutchak from UAB writes in his blog response:

"We certainly don't need to keep the print to satisfy our user 
base. Two years ago we stopped getting any print for our 
ScienceDirect titles. I did not get a single question, comment, 
or expression of concern from faculty or students.  We've reached 
the point where librarians tend to worry a lot more about the 
print than the people who use our libraries do."

I am curious to hear whether this is a commonly held sentiment. 
In other words, do the librarians on this list have the sense 
that their patrons are operating in a post-print world (not in 
the OA/PMC/Battle Royale sense of the term, but meaning have we 
outgrown print)?  If so, this would be a remarkable shift, and a 
remarkably quick one.  Certainly when I helped launch The 
Berkeley Electronic Press in 2000, print was sacrosanct.  The 
idea of a viable electronic-only journal publisher was met with 
feedback running the wide gamut from skepticism to scorn.  If 
this equation has indeed flipped in a matter of a half-dozen or 
so years, this ranks as one of the most important periods in 
scholarly communication history.

Best, Greg

Greg Tananbaum
gtananbaum@gmail.com
(510) 295-7504