In cutting serials subscriptions, the SUS libraries have eliminated the titles that were of least value to the academic programs on their campuses. These relatively esoteric titles are not generally available in electronic form. When articles from thes e canceled titles are requested by SUS students and faculty, the SUS libraries will have to request copies from other libraries which will supply them from a print version of the journal or from commercial document delivery services. This pattern of high inflation of serials prices, followed by cancellation of the least relevant titles, followed by increased borrowing has been repeated through several cycles in recent years at almost all U.S. academic libraries. This pattern has become so commonplace th at it has spurred libraries to become strong supporters of the recently passed High Performance Computing Act proposed by Senator Gore which contains a provision to build a high speed National Research and Education Network (NREN) to move information more quickly throughout the U.S.
The goal of many in the library community is to use the NREN for the rapid delivery of scholarly information such as journal articles and government research reports. The hope is that publishers will eventually distribute articles over the NREN in addit ion to (or in lieu of) distribution of printed issues. Further, the hope of many librarians is that electronic distribution will be less costly than printed issues and thus libraries will be able to acquire--quickly on demand--the materials their users need.
Such hopes will not be realized overnight, but the process has begun--at least in the U.S. The challenge for America's academic libraries is to work within the current system of scholarly communication to help to bring about change and bring down the co st of scholarly communication. There must be changes to the means of production and distribution of scholarly information. And locally, universities and libraries must develop the technology to participate in a nation-wide system of electronic scholarly communication.
This document presents a plan to use computer and communications technology as a beginning step in what will be a ten to twenty year process toward providing students and faculty with rapid electronic access to journal articles from sources beyond the lo cal library collection. This plan will not only benefit students and faculty in traditional on-campus programs in the long run, but it will also help off-campus and distance learning programs in the more immediate future. The plan envisions making avail able additional computer databases of journal article citations as well as the electronic delivery of journal articles themselves. In order to accomplish this new service, the SUS libraries must migrate to a client/server computer architecture in which t he library workstations can access many different information sources whether they are in the library, on campus, in the SUS or across the country.
Changing to a more rapid electronic form of communication will be a slow process. Our ability to use electronic articles as alternate resources for document delivery may be severely restricted if the U.S. or international copyright laws and data licens e contracts are construed to discourage electronic delivery. Permissions/contracts and royalty payments may resolve some of those restrictions or conflicts, but at the same time may deprive the researcher of "fair use" privileges. Even if the U.S. makes rapid progress over the next 10 to 20 years, the rest of the world will not be as quick to change. Print on paper will still be the major form of distribution of scholarly communication for several decades. Libraries will have to have substantial print collections for the foreseeable future. Until the U.S. system of scholarly journal publication has made significant progress in electronic distribution, U.S. academic libraries will need to collect print journals to the maximum extent that their budgets will allow. Until we have reached the time when we have "virtual libraries," we need to maintain "virtuoso libraries," i.e., libraries with strong collections in all media especially print. To return to the point of this proposal, however, we cannot de velop the electronic collections without resources and time to build the technological base. This proposal is a good start on building that base. The service and the resources required to support it are described below.