“Why can’t open-access initiatives get some of that sweet, sweet library budget money?” the Loon was asked (well, entitledly whinged at, but it comes to much the same thing).

Short answer: The librarians in charge of allocating collections money have no incentive to support open access, and the librarians (supposedly) in charge of changing scholarly communication have either zero budget or strictly-earmarked budgets that do not permit this use. QED.

Longer answer:

Who builds library collections?

Consortia

A substantial part of the answer, especially for journal Big Deals, is “library coalitions known (in the US, at least) as ‘consortia.'” A given library may well belong to more than one consortium, though there is a natural limit to this: overlapping consortial purchases mean diminishing returns on each additional consortium membership. Consortium member libraries have input into consortial acquisitions decisions, but almost never pure veto power. A member library that thinks a consortium is wasting money can (… usually, not always) withdraw, but it cannot force change unilaterally, even if without its contribution the consortium would fold.

Consortia are typically given neither responsibility nor authority to use their funds, staff, or infrastructure to influence change in scholarly communication. (Exception: some consortia who also take on library-IT responsibilities may run a consortial institutional repository. The Loon, having run one such and had input into another, does not think this has proven to be an effective organizational model.) Germany’s Projekt DEAL is very much the exception to this rule. Scholarly-communication librarians are hired by libraries, not consortia; the consortium will not even help them build a community of practice, should there even be enough of them to consider such (which usually there are not).

Academic libraries at institutions from tiny to the lower end of medium-size may receive all their journals from consortial memberships. They have zero discretionary journal money, and usually painfully small (possibly zero!) non-journal collections budgets also.

That larger libraries—which do the vast bulk of change-scholarly-communication work in academic librarianship—do not unilaterally control decisions in consortia they belong to has an important implication for open access. Effectively, smaller libraries that belong to consortia have veto power over moving consortial money toward open. In the Loon’s experience, they use this veto consistently and controllingly, preferring to free-ride on open access efforts and put scarce consortial money (which, let us recall, represents much to all of a small-institution library’s journal-collection budget) toward paying to lower an additional paywall or two. Strict economic rationalists will notice that this is their optimal choice under the circumstances.

Individual libraries

Beyond consortia, the academic-library purse-controllers vary somewhat:

• Libraries with especially antique organizational structures may have “bibliographers,” whose sole (or at least heavily dominant) responsibility is collecting books and individual journal titles in specific subject areas. As Big Deals took firm hold of library budgets, bibliographers lost almost all ability to choose journals; those few who remain today collect mostly books, perhaps a few individual digital aggregations or multimedia resources.
• Many libraries have moved to a more cross-functional “liaison” model, in which collection development is one of several competing duties (a common triad is reference-desk work, information-literacy instruction, and collections). As with bibliographers, an individual liaison typically collects in defined subject areas.
• Especially small libraries (say, under ten librarian FTE) may handle collection development communally. They may also make it one librarian’s responsibility across all subject areas.

(The Loon is intentionally eliding the role of acquisitions librarians, who implement accounting controls, handle invoices, and do other suchlike business, because they rarely influence exactly which material is chosen for purchase; also the systems/e-resources librarian work of setting up trial subscriptions and handling proxy servers and ERM systems and link resolvers and knowledgebases, for the same reason.)

The split along subject-area lines continues into the collections budget itself, which (aside from consortial earmarks) is split into Very Big Deal money (for omnidisciplinary resources like Scopus, Web of Science, or various EBSCO properties) and subject-specific “funds.” Allocating money to funds is a black art. Theoretically it is done via some combination of written collection-development policy, student and faculty numbers and interest in the area, rough cost of materials, need for up-to-date materials (a function of a field’s speed of change, often), earmarked gift funds from donors, and existing library collection strengths/weaknesses, but in actuality—it is a black art.

You will never, however, meet a librarian with collections responsibilities who believes that their subjects receive a fair monetary shake. Many purchases, many paywalls, are always out of reach, and faculty are ever-demanding. For this reason, collections librarians (of whatever organizational stripe) are like consortial negotiators in that they vastly prefer to free-ride on open access. Cues to do otherwise would either have to come from above, or be agreed upon by consensus—and good luck with that one.

How do librarians handle a resource that crosses disciplinary lines? If it’s not consortial, or a Very Big Deal taken off the top, it is horse-traded for by the collections librarians for the subjects in question (“your fund pays 40%, mine 60%”).

That the split into funds exists, however, creates another problem for open access: it makes Leslie Chan’s “1% solution” (or, if you prefer, David W. Lewis’s 2.5%) impractical. (The Loon says this with regret, as she rather likes the idea.) There simply isn’t, except notionally, an overall collections budget to take 1% of. There are only consortial earmarks, Very Big Deal earmarks, and subject funds.

Scholarly-communications librarians

Notice who was missing from the above tallies? Scholarly-communications librarians. The Loon didn’t miss their role in collections decisions; they have none, an artifact of their organizational isolation (not to say Coordinator-dom) and often-odd reporting lines. Now, this is not a universal; a hybrid librarian may have collections duties (and corresponding budget) along with scholarly-communication duties. Should such a librarian allocate money to open access, however, the difference from colleagues’ collection behavior will not be appreciated, much less lauded or applauded—not by those colleagues, nor by the faculty served by the hybrid librarian.

The only other money a scholarly-communications librarian may have to spend toward open-access journals or platforms will be an author-side fee fund, which the librarian will not be allowed to spend on anything else.

The Loon repeats: The librarians in charge of allocating collections money have no incentive to support open access, and the librarians (supposedly) in charge of changing scholarly communication have either zero budget or strictly-earmarked budgets that do not permit this use.

Now what?

So how can open access get its share of that sweet, sweet library collections money? The Loon has a few tentative thoughts, which boil down to go with the grain.

Consortia

To target consortial money, open access needs a Big Deal, as big and multi-disciplinary as possible; Big Deals are what consortia do, their reason for existing in the first place. Could a bundle of journals, platforms, disciplinary pre/postprint servers, and other such initiatives band together to create a deal consortia can’t refuse? It seems possible. Cynically, the Loon suspects marketing such a deal would involve a pianissimo hint at consortial fears that open access will put them out of a job.

Pricing such a deal needs to start out cheap, because open access needs a few consortia to take a flyer so that the Overton window of consortial practice can finally, creakily swing wide enough for open access. Still, SPARC immediately strikes the Loon as a useful ally here, and Projekt DEAL might be prevailed upon to go first—especially since such a move could weaken Elsevier’s Great Game position just that little bit further.

Individual libraries

Targeting non-consortial collections money is harder. Forget about small-institution collections librarians; they don’t have enough money to be worth the effort (and it will take a lot of effort) of individual contact (and it will take individual contact). Large institutions should be chosen carefully; too many of their collections librarians never saw an open-access initiative they didn’t love to hate (the Loon has many stories on this score). The better bet is to build genuine relationships with librarians and deans at medium-size institutions, as the Open Library of the Humanities has successfully done.

Discipline-specific Big(gish) Open Access Deals (perhaps subsets of the Big Deal aimed at consortia?) have a shot at support, but again, it will require considerable relationship-building. Do not make PhilPapers’s mistake of assuming that because your cause is holy librarians obviously must flock to your aid. That is entitlement and it is poisonous arrogance and collections librarians deal with it all the time (no few toll-access outfits hire ignorant arrogant entitled bullying sexist sleazebags to do sales) and they quite reasonably loathe it. The open-access movement has already scored many games’ worth of own goals by behaving like utter cloacas toward librarians. It has no hope of changing this reputation—which, allow the Loon to repeat, is well-deserved—until it wises up, learns to listen instead of accusing and ignorantly pontificating, and chooses to behave as a librarian ally.

Similarly, do not think that all you need do is hang out a shingle and collections librarians will magically discover you and throw money at you. Trust the Loon, that is not how collections work works. Salesfolk drown librarians in pitches. There is no time to go hunting—and what is the point of hunting, when there are always more things to buy than money to buy them?

Scholarly-communications librarians

This is tricky. The Loon wishes she could say that they are natural allies. The reason they are not is not that they do not want to help—they do! It is that they have no money to offer (as discussed above), and their colleagues who do collections work consider them intruders and heed their input not in the slightest.

What you can ask of them—and be aware that it is an ask, not something you are entitled to—is policy and strategy work, especially if you can find local faculty willing to pitch in alongside them. More on this below.

Faculty and administrators

If the faculty ain’t happy, ain’t no librarian happy.

The faculty are never happy about the library collection. Ever. Nor are they shy about blaming librarians for it. What this means for the emotional state of librarians the Loon will leave as an exercise for the reader.

Anyone wanting librarians to reallocate money toward open access needs to understand: faculty who just want More Journals are vastly more numerous, considerably louder, often more senior, and even more entitled than faculty open-access advocates. Don’t play the beating-down-the-librarians’-office-doors game. You can’t win it. You will simply get trampled under the stampede of More Journalsists.

Instead, be strategic; find leverage points. Find open-access–friendly local faculty and encourage them to join whatever faculty council advises the library (there will practically always be one). Also encourage them to join the faculty senate (or local equivalent). Affably, opportunistically get open-access–friendly views in the minutes and otherwise on the record. (Don’t be a one-note bore, however, lest you be written off; take a suitable interest in the rest of the agenda also.) Invite the local scholarly-communication librarian to speak, and strategize with that librarian in advance about the speech content.

Have local friendly faculty read the library’s strategic plan, highlighting any strategic goal or statement that can be spun as open-access–friendly. Make (or have them make) an appointment to chat with the appropriate collection developer, the scholarly-communication librarian, and (if you or they can swing it) a library administrator. Your agenda is to ask what the library’s operations plan is in pursuit of the open-access–friendly goal in the strategic plan—and to be ready to swing in with “hey, there’s this opportunity to support an organization that’s right in line with this goal!” Nine times out of ten this won’t work—but the tenth time moves the Overton window.

Listen carefully for any sign that the library is revising its collection-development policy. Do not miss this chance—it is immensely strategically valuable! Get open access into that policy by hook or by crook.

Express appreciation as often, loudly, and publicly as possible for any librarian who helps out. Scholarly-communications librarians especially need vocal, public faculty support; it is one of their few roads toward political capital inside the library.

Gift funds

One more chink in the wall bears mention: gift funds. Money donated to libraries, or earned through friends-of-the-library events, goes to collections more often than not, even when not specifically earmarked for collections in general or any collection or subject area in particular. More interestingly, library administrators have considerable discretion over some (though not all) gift funds. Adroit relationship-building here (again, watch the Open Library of the Humanities) could send some of that money in open-access directions. The problem here is that allocations of gift money are practically always one-time, not continuing—but it’s at least a place to start, and it might (again, if adroitly handled) lead to ongoing support.

Ugh, isn’t there an easier way?

What, you thought this would be easy? The Loon threw away more than half a decade on this kind of fight, destroying her own library career in the process. That in 2017 you might actually win one time in ten is due to much effort and sacrifice from the Loon and many loons like her. Show some damned respect and decency by keeping your hopes and timeline reasonable.

Oh, do cheer up. If you can convince the cranky, irascible Loon to like you, you have a quite decent chance with a typical librarian, who is much nicer than the Loon.

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