The Survivability of Texts
I've been working on a history of the survivability of texts in the United States over the course of the past 150 years. This history has major implications for policymaking about how to organize future preservation services for both print and electronic materials. From a systemwide organizational perspective, there are significant implications for the network accessible environment. I will give a brief overview of my work and invite discussion.
Roger Schonfeld is Manager of Research for Ithaka, a not-for-profit organization working to help higher education take advantage of advances in information technologies. Roger leads a research program presently focused on the transition away from print and related preservation issues; on understanding the community's information-services needs; and on improving our understanding of new resource models for teaching and learning. Roger is the author of JSTOR: A History (Princeton University Press, 2003), which examines business models for the shift to an online environment for scholarly texts by focusing on how JSTOR developed into a self-sustaining not-for-profit organization. He has also published The Nonsubscription Side of Periodicals (Council on Library and Information Resources, 2004) and, with Brian Lavoie, the most comprehensive examination of the systemwide print book collection, "Books without Boundaries: A Brief Tour of the System-wide Print Book Collection," Journal of Electronic Publishing, 2006. Previously, Roger was a research associate at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.