Cornell Library will host lecture about electronic database issues

Cornell University Library is hosting a lecture, "Reclaiming Scholarly Communication," Friday, May 10, by Kenneth Frazier, director of the General Library System at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Frazier will discuss issues affecting the rapidly changing electronic environment in which research information is disseminated. The program, which is free and open to the community, will be held from 9 to 10 a.m. in 700 Clark Hall on campus. Refreshments will be available at 8:30 a.m.

A key figure in the current debate on the reform of the scholarly communication system, Frazier has challenged the academic community to think about the online environment as an opportunity to ensure the widest possible access to research literature. His March 2001 opinion piece in D-Lib Magazine, "The Librarian's Dilemma: Contemplating the Costs of the Big Deal," called on university librarians to resist commercial publishers' subscription offers for electronic aggregations of journals saying, "The current generation of library directors is engaged in a dangerous 'game' in which short-term institutional benefits are achieved at the long-term expense of the academic community."

That article, and Frazier's recent speeches on the same subject, sparked a lively debate among librarians about the pros and cons of licensing agreements with commercial journal publishers. "The Big Deal is now the Big Done Deal for most research libraries," he says. "Large, full-text electronic databases are dominating the information marketplace and steadily devouring library budgets. When forced to choose, most librarians keep electronic licenses and cut print acquisitions."

Frazier has been the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison General Library System since 1992 and a member of the UW-Madison library staff since 1978. He is a past president of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Frazier also is a founding member and past chair of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), which is an ARL-sponsored initiative dedicated to reducing the cost of research information by promoting competition and technical innovation in scholarly publishing.

A national advocate on issues related to the fair use of copyrighted works for educational purposes, Frazier in 2000 received the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award from the American Library Association for his leadership and risk-taking in the development of new approaches to the crisis in scholarly communication. Frazier also is the founder of UW-Madison Library's Parallel Press, a publisher of poetry chapbooks and scholarly works in digital and paper formats.

For more information about Frazier and his May 10 lecture, visit: http://library.cornell.edu/pdc/frazier.html