Libraries, Leadership, and Scholarly Communication: Essays by Rick Anderson

Rick Anderson

Aug 2016 · American Library Association

About this ebook

A creative thinker on topics related to library collections and scholarly publishing, Rick Anderson does not back away from controversy. "Whenever we, as members of an organization like a library, are forced to choose between good things, we may start by trying to figure out some way to have both things," he writes in the preface. "But in many cases, that will turn out to be impossible and we'll have to decide which good thing is going to take priority over the other. We can't make that decision without invoking values, and the moment we start invoking values is when the conversation can take a really difficult and interesting turn." When it's time for your organization to make choices and set priorities, this collection of essays, articles, white papers, and blog posts will provide conversation starters for your strategic discussions. Anderson offers engaging, persuasive arguments on a range of timely topics, such as:

the decline of print;

patron-driven acquisitions;

Open Access (OA);

blacklisting publishers and relations with publishers' sales reps;

patron privacy;

symptoms of zealotry;

unintended consequences of the print-on-demand model; and

how to define library value.

Ideal for browsing, the ideas in this collection will kickstart your brainstorming sessions and spur your organization to confront choices head on.

About the author

 Rick Anderson is associate dean for collections and scholarly communication in the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah. He has worked previously as a bibliographer for YBP, Inc.; as head acquisitions librarian for the University of North Carolina, Greensboro; and as director of resource acquisition at the University of Nevada, Reno. He serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards, is a regular contributor to The Scholarly Kitchen, and has been a regular contributor to Library Journal’s Academic Newswire. His book Buying and Contracting for Resources and Services: A How-to-Do-It Manual for Librarians was published in 2004 by Neal-Schuman. In 2005, he was identified by Library Journal as a “Mover &Shaker”—one of the “50 people shaping the future of libraries.” In 2008, he was elected president of the North American Serials Interest Group, and he was named an ARL Research Library Leadership Fellow for 2009–2010. In 2013, he was the recipient of the HARRASSOWITZ Leadership in Library Acquisitions Award and was invited to give the Gould Distinguished Lecture on Technology and the Quality of Life at the University of Utah. In 2015, he was elected president of the Society for Scholarly Publishing. He is a popular speaker on subjects related to the future of scholarly communication and research libraries.