I think Klaus's point is rather to find a solution to the outrageous prices publishers ask for their books. The problem is that they won't bother cutting down their prices as long as libraries will happily buy their overpriced publications. There's no easy solution, of course. Authors prefer to have their books published, no matter at what price. Libraries are (unfortunately) totally unable to negociate the prices other than not buying, but this has no consequence upon the publishers' price policies. Moreover, the publisher's greed oblige them to spend vast sums of money (which generally came from public funds) to acquire a few books. And scholars and students who can't afford the books are but forced to rely on their library to buy it. I do agree with Klaus that what is wrong is this "laisser faire" attitude of counting on libraries to dilapidate public money on overpriced books.
I have no solution to propose but we should seek to find new ways to publish scholarly works and make them generally available to the public. There's are electronic forms of publications but there also are some publishers who sell their books at decent prices. Why not trade a bit of "prestige" for easier and wider access?
LB
on 25/6/04 2:34 AM, Norman Hinton at hinton@springnet1.com wrote:
Let's see -- if I can't afford it. it's also wrong to have my library buy it ? That makes very little sense. Maybe if we all take principled stands, none of us will be able to have access to anything.
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