For example, this occurs despite the US constitutional requirement that copyright is granted “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” In some instances, higher education communities lack unifying positions on different intellectual property domains (patents, copyrights, public domain), and adopt highly varied policy and practice at the local level. The Absence of Mechanisms for Research Libraries to Influence the Marketplace Many consider the scholarly communication environment to be dysfunctional and fragmented, evincing monopolistic characteristics, and failing to deliver all disciplinary research at a reasonable price and on an equal footing. There is an absence of robust and sufficiently powerful mechanisms for cooperative action by the research library community to influence markets and undertake common project development. Policies and Practices that Inhibit Innovation and Enduring Access Accessible technologies and ubiquitous networks have transformed individual expectations about access to information and methods of communication. New forms of publishing and innovative scholarly products have emerged and in some disciplines have sparked entirely new systems of scholarly communications. Many public and institutional policies and practices lag behind these changes and need to be updated in order to support rather than inhibit innovations and enduring access to scholarship and information. The Need to Reconfigure Research Library Organizations and Services The value of research libraries to the research enterprise is changing. Especially in a constrained economic climate, a new place must be created for the research library that recognizes and leverages the “Google world” and the emergence of collaborative research. New strategies are needed to reconfigure research library organizations and services and build increasingly diverse and talented staff to provide leadership and technical skills that are responsive to this rapidly changing environment. RLI 268 4 Themes within the ARL Strategic Plan 2010–2012 ( C O N T I N U E D ) FEBRUARY 2010 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC
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