An Interview with Jenica Rogers
Tue, 02/05/2013 - 21:35
.jpg "Jenica Rogers")
PrintIn 2012, Jenica Rogers, director of libraries for the State University of New York at Potsdam, drew attention in the library community for announcing candidly in September that she would not be renewing her university’s annual subscription to the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) online journals package because of ever-increasing subscription costs. Rogers’s stance sent shock waves throughout the community and brought up questions concerning new business models and the challenge of open access. American Libraries spoke with Rogers in November about the outcomes of her decision.
AMERICAN LIBRARIES: What have been the effects at SUNY Potsdam over your decision to cancel ACS journals? Was there backlash?
JENICA ROGERS: No, no backlash. I was extremely conscientious in making sure everyone was involved in the discussion up front. Anyone who would be interested in it knew what was happening.
How did the American Chemical Society react?
They have not chosen to reach out to me. Their initial press response was from Glenn Ruskin, their vice president of sales, marketing, and web strategy. You can read about it online if you choose to. In response I called Brandon Nordin, vice president of North American sales, and told him that ACS was exceedingly inappropriate and that I was very disappointed. Nordin said he would like to come to Potsdam to talk with me to try and find a better solution for us. I said I would be happy to meet so long as there was a true chance that we could come up with a better pricing solution for small institutions. I’m not interested in making a better deal just for Potsdam; I want there to be a better deal for institutions like mine.
You met for seven hours with ACS representatives to come to an agreement. What were some of their arguments?
They had a clean and acceptable counterargument. They said they had been working very hard for the past several years to standardize pricing across all institutions and that they had been trying to build the kind of pricing model that librarians say is important—based on use at your institutions, the size of your institutions, etc.—that is “fair and accurate.” The challenge is that they then apply all those “fair and accurate” factors to a base price that is completely unacceptable. And they are not willing to negotiate on that base price. So we ended up nowhere.
You have said that it is hard for librarians to say no to price hikes. Why is that?
We are really good at providing excellent service, and when your main professional goal is to connect people to information, we’ll bend over backward to find a way to afford things, even if it’s a really foolish decision in the long run. Because in the short term, we want to give people what they need, right? That’s what we do: We help people find information. So when we say “no” to a price increase, we’re making it harder for people to get access to information. Philosophically that’s really hard.
What is your ideal model for academic libraries?
It needs to be sustainable, whatever it is, for all people involved. It needs to be sustainable for scholars; it needs to be sustainable for libraries; and it needs to be sustainable for publishers. Sometimes that will be an open-source solution, and sometimes that will be a paid solution. But what we have right now is not sustainable.
You blogged about this experience as a call to action. Did it work?
It’s too early to tell. But I hope it encouraged people to try or start trying. Libraries don’t work quickly, particularly not in academia. We have fiscal-year constraints. For some libraries that moment has come and gone. They are locked into their contract for the coming year. There are many libraries that are very inclusive in their decision making. That is one of our cultural things and so there are a lot of people to consult about decisions. Part of what I was hoping to encourage is for librarians to truly engage their faculty in the discussion.
American Libraries Magazine | 50 East Huron | Chicago, IL 60611 | 2013© American Library Association | Staff Login
Comments
The other side of the story
There is another side to this story, a side that has not been told.
The staff, faculty, and librarians at SUNY Potsdam are all represented by Local 613 of the labor union Civil Service Employees Association, Inc. (CSEA).
New York State is a solidly union state. Unions work together to elect politicians that are friendly to unions; the politicians in turn pass legislation that provides great economic benefits to union members.
These economic benefits include higher-than-average salaries, a shorter workweek, yearly raises, generous vacation leaves, and top-of-the-line health and dental benefits.
The result is that universities such as SUNY Potsdam have a lot less money in their budgets to pay for library resources. They are top-heavy with salary obligations.
So the real story here is not that the American Chemical Society is charging high prices for its content. The story is that SUNY Potsdam is paying so much in salary and benefits that is unable to afford databases its students need to learn.
Also, because librarians at SUNY Potsdam have shorter workweeks, the libraries have to hire more librarians to accomplish the same amount of work done at a similar institution with a normal workweek.
If I were a student at SUNY Potsdam, I would feel cheated by this imbalance. The university prioritizes spending money on generous salaries and benefits over spending it on needed databases. The university is choosing to spend tuition dollars on salaries and benefits over needed online databases.
Jenica Rogers appears to be enjoying the attention she is receiving as the anti-corporatist heroine. The real story is much different. Students at SUNY Potsdam are the victims of a greedy union.
Not quite
Mr Beall,
We are indeed a unionized state university, but you have some of your facts wrong. Librarians are faculty, as are our library professionals — and faculty are not in the CSEA union, they are UUP members, which is an affiliate of NYSUT, the NY state teachers’ union. So our 13 professionals and librarians are not members of CSEA, and per their union contract do not have a “shorter workweek” as you refer to it. They are obliged by their contracts to fulfill the responsibilities of their position, with no definition on time or place for doing that. They, in fact, are hugely dedicated professionals who work long hours to do the work that needs to be done.
I won’t dispute that we have high staffing costs, but I think that paying our staff well is a triumph, not a tragedy. The issue of publisher pricing conflicts stands on its own merits without accusing hard-working library staff of being overpaid. Your counter-argument is an insult to the library faculty who have to make hard decisions in times of financial crisis, and it’s nothing but an under-informed distracting tactic to suggest otherwise.
Best,
Jenica.
Jenica, you are not alone
Here at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, we have also had to face hard budgetary decisions, and are trying to provide access to the American Chemical Society journals through an alternative route. We have cancelled our subscription to ACS, and will be using document delivery.
Our chemistry department faculty were consulted, and while they are not exactly happy, they are willing to give it a try.