RE: Is it time to stop printing journals?

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> From our early work on the Portico archive we have seen that 
> libraries from across the spectrum (and around the world) are 
> willing to contribute to support of a community-based permanent 
> archive.  This response suggests that libraries - large and 
> small - believe that action to ensure permanent access to the 
> scholarly record is just as vital to the teaching and education 
> mission of their parent institutions as is the provision of 
> current access to a breadth of materials.

Absolutely.  But it also demonstrates these libraries' 
recognition that they may not be the ones who can (or even ought 
to) provide that permanence of access.  Initiatives like Portico 
allow libraries to offload some of their archival functions so 
that they can focus scarce resources on other aspects of their 
mission.  I think this kind of specialization is probably the 
wave of the future: most libraries will become more focused on 
providing breadth rather than permanence, and specialized 
services (Portico, JSTOR, etc.) will continue to develop 
specialized archival functions to make that possible.

---
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu