How gender studies affects the future of academic libraries? The vision of the university library by Robert Darnton

Abstract

Not only is this article an attempt of reconstruction of Darnton’s views concerning books, libraries and research but also shows their near future. The author is trying to decode a vicious circle which everyone seems to be within – librarians in academic libraries, scientists and publishers. The trap starts with high prices of journals – while libraries must pay for delivering scholarly journals, they find themselves not having enough money to spend on monographs. In this situation, when even libraries are not purchasing such releases, editors are not willing to publish them due to minimal expected income. It is becoming clear that this deadlock can be broken only by changing the philosophy of life - meaning moving scientists to “open access” publishing.
Scientific releases, published by editors’ associations, emerge thanks to public resources. However, they are inaccessible to regular tax-payers. The clue is that libraries are forced to buy their own people’s publications. This is becoming frustrating for most scientists and that is why they decided to share their work in “open access” manner. If such behaviour was promoted and maintained by research institutions it would give an opportunity for development. The most significant achievement here is that science can be made less dependent on economy and industries what obviously brings it closer to its very essence.