Session V. Roundup and critique

Walter Fraser (Rutgers University Graduate School of Library Service): It has seemed to me unfortunate during the Conference that there has been a “soak the library” atmosphere; it´s distressing. Our revenues throughout the library system have not increased during this lime of exigency and there seems little possibility that they will. Libraries already in many instances pay a higher institutional rate for journals than members or the general public do. In addition, there´s a great deal of discussion about adding on copyright permission charges or simply just raising the institutional rate. I heard at least three speakers who are editors say, “Well we´ve got higher costs, so we´ll raise the institutional rate.” The obvious implications in that case will be some of the things mentioned by the chairman, Fred Spilhaus. If institutional rates continue to be raised, there´s obviously going to be a shakeout of journals. I´m not terribly sure that that´s an ultimate improvement. There are many operations of this society in which tests of the marketplace are valid. I´m not sure the test of the marketplace is valid in biology; it may be in chemistry where there´s tremendous support from organizations within the society, from business, universities, and government. There are some fields where this may not be a valid criterion for deciding which journals should continue. The library purchases do constitute advertisement for the journal; they do constitute exposure of the student in the profession and the embryo professional to the journal. I just view with horror the attitude of “soak the libraries.”