Wendy P. Lougee

A Report on the PEAK Experiment: Usage and Economic Behavior

Electronic access to scholarly journals has become an important and commonly accepted tool for researchers. The user community has become more familiar with the medium over time and has started to actively bid for alternative forms of access. Technological improvements in the communication networks, paired with the decreasing costs of hardware, create greater incentives for innovation. Consequently, although publishers and libraries face a number of challenges, they also have promising new opportunities.1 Publishers are creating many new electronic-only journals on the Internet, while also developing and deploying electronic access to literature traditionally distributed on paper. They are modifying traditional pricing schemes and content bundles, and creating new schemes to take advantage of the characteristics of digital duplication and distribution.

The diffuse library revisited: aligning the library as strategic asset

Purpose: Originally a keynote speech to the 9 th International Bielefeld Conference exploring the shifts in roles evident in the research library community, with illustrative case studies from the University of Minnesota Libraries. Design/methodology/approach: A review of environmental forces that are fueling changes in research methodologies and scholar behavior. Changes in research library roles are explored in the context of three case studies, highlighting new forms of engagement with the scholar community. Findings: Three University of Minnesota Libraries’ initiatives illustrate: the use of behavioral data to design a customized discovery environment for scholarship, new organizational constructs to engage the community in issues related to control of scholarship, and strategies to develop a virtual community in the field of bioethics. Originality / value: The paper presents the original perspective of a University Librarian of a large research library and draws on earlier analyses of research behaviors, technology, and research library roles. Paper type: Case Study

Scholarly journals in the late 20th century

The scholarly journal has remained largely unchanged in purpose and structure during its three-century evolution. Current forces within the publishing industry, technology sector, the academy, and the related research environment are prompting rapid change in scholarly communication. Economic models for journals reflect both the unique challenges of the publisher as well as these broader environmental forces. Several constructs are described, followed by a preliminary report on an experimental project, PEAK (Pricing Electronic Access to Knowledge), which explores models for journal pricing and products. PEAK and other innovative projects that challenge traditional journal models may serve as both catalysts for change as well as prototypes for the scholarly journals of the early 21st century.

The University of Michigan digital library program: a retrospective on collaboration within the academy

The University of Michigan Digital Library Program is a collaborative enterprise that has built digital content and an information infrastructure for the campus community. A near‐term strategy of project‐based activity has provided visible successes, opportunities for development and elaboration of skills, and a context in which to explore broader issues of the networked information arena. The program’s early focus on developing an architecture for digital collections and durable formats for information resources has provided a foundation on which to build future domain‐based, knowledge environments.