Since I have been in the library profession for 40 years, I
know
that authors paying for article publication is not new,
particularly in the sciences. Those fees were either covered
by
grants or by academic departments decades ago and still are
at
some institutions. I am a proponent of that same system
today. I
know exactly, down to the dollar, what comes to the library
as
indirect costs from overhead. I know what our percentage of
that
50%+ is and that it often differs from campus to campus.
I'd
venture to say that some libraries never see a penny of that
money.
It's good to be familiar with how that operation works
because
you can then lobby for a bigger percentage if you can gain
the
support of a body of researchers. We've had some success in
that
area. I am very familiar with grants procedures having
written
several that brought in more than $10 million - either as
the PI,
co-PI, and/or member of a team. Our team operated a few
years to
build and fund our statewide library network until we
obtained
legislative funding and could stop relying on soft money for
network support.
Indirect cost funds at our university are targeted to
support
journal price increases and new subscriptions. I have
incorporated grant awards into one of the spreadsheets I use
to
allocate funds for materials. My philosophy is that indirect
cost
funds come to academic libraries to support research
materials
that will enable faculty to obtain more grants. They are not
to
support faculty publications needed for promotion &
tenure. That
is the responsibility of academic departments and that is
where
that responsibility should remain -- certainly not from
faculty
personal funds. I am realistic enough, however, to know that
in
certain less productive departments research and
publication-wise, personal funds may be all that's
available but
those departments are unlikely to contribute much in the way
of
indirect cost monies. Personally, library funds are
stretched too
far now to further endanger them by taking on page fee
charges --
but that's just my opinion.
Jane Kleiner
Associate Dean of Libraries for Collection Services
The LSU Libraries
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Phone: 225-578-2217
Fax: 225-578-6825
E-Mail: jkleiner lsu.edu
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