We’re not the only ones rowing this boat. Marketing minds and revenue stream strategists go to great lengths to know what their customers are thinking/where markets are heading. In this session, we had a seasoned acquiring librarian breakdown PDA from the library's perspective and a serial CEO/high-level industry consultant analyze how best to take advantage of the current and future situations from the publisher's point of view. A must-see set of slides and video recording ensued, covering this important opportunity in the academic library space:
Rick Anderson, University of Utah Libraries, provided the libraries perspective, here. Joseph J. Esposito, Publishing Consultant, shared results of a Mellon-funded study of the impact of PDA on book publishers, university presses in particular, here. Thank you, Terry Ehling, Associate Director, Content Development, Project MUSE, for chairing the session and providing salient framing commentary.
Not in the slides = Mellon study findings suggest that we will see ubiquity of PDA programs (across all research library collections) in 5 years.
Gist = if we are to steer this ship toward the best possible win-win (to maximize profits on sandy beaches), we’ll have to understand all oarsmen and row this boat in concert with them.
Articles on PDA at the scholarly kitchen, here, are recommended for further reading
Esposito closed with another plug for scholarly presses to field their own unified, customer-facing website, previously mentioned here. Why? This session, as with many others this year and last, is another discussion of managing a shift in leverage away from publishers (over the last twenty+ years). Archimedes is purported to have said: “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.” A unified, customer-facing website is such a place to stand.
