LISNews: Librarian News

Rumor has it the editorial board of Elsevier's Journal of Algorithms has stepped down due to "the prices being charged by commercial publishers of scientific journals."
In October Professor Don Knuth wrote a fantastic long letter to the editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms, explaining the current state of affairs. He has it on his web site (Look for "Crisis in Scientific Publishing") with hopes that it will be helpful to anybody else who is trying to deal with this serious problem.
note: if this was just rumor I wouldn't post it, but I've not been able to find an "official announcement" yet, I was told to watch SIGACT News for the final word.

Norma sent over This Transcript of Colloquy Live about open access at Chronicle of Higher Education web site. Interview with Peter Suber of Earlham College.
After hundreds of years in which scientific publishers have based their business models on charging subscribers, could a fundamental change be just around the corner in this $3.5-billion-a-year industry? If so, how will the new journals affect researchers, librarians, and publishers?

A study reported in January's D-Lib Magazine finds that the auxiliary "costs of the electronic format are consistently and substantially lower than those of the print format." Each of the eleven academic libraries in the study calculated a lower total life-cycle maintenance cost for electronic serial titles - the print versions on average cost over four times more. The price savings of e-journals was covered previously.

Walt writes "A special issue of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large is now available
for downloading at http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ4i2.pdf

This 20-page issue (PDF as always),
Volume 4 Issue 2, Midwinter 2004,
has one article or 98 "articles," depending on your perspective:

A is for AAC: A Discursive Glossary

98 expansions and essays on abbreviations and terms, including the following key terms:
broadcast flag, compulsory licensing, copyleft, copyright, DMCA, DVD, Eldred Act, fair use, KTD, open access, OpenURL, PASA, public domain, RSS, scholarly access, swamping, top technology trend, weblogs"

Update: 01/02 16:16 EST by B:"L is for LISNews... The most important multi-author weblog in the library community"Thanks Walt, you're too kind!