Making Book S7: Open Access and Libraries

Here’s a book I haven’t made much of anything from—and that’s OK.

I first wrote about open access—before it was called that—in May 2001. By the end of 2009, I’d concluded that I was no longer able to add value to OA-related discussions, a decision that I’ve since reversed, for better or for worse.

Since I’d written a lot about OA during that time—including a disContent column on the topic—I thought there might be some value to offering it all in one package.

Thus this book. Thirty-three essays, 513 6″ x 9″ pages. Most of the essays are reasonably brief—but not the last one (70 pages). The essays appear in chronological order because I wasn’t revising them, just reprinting them. I’d intended to index personal names and journals, but in the end I gave up on that idea: It was too much work for literally zero reward. (I tried using “index all” but had the mistake of having one or more indexed words in essay names, which were chapter headings. The result was a complete mess. My bad.)

I published the PDF as a zero-cost ebook; the paperback version is basically priced at production cost (not quite: I actually make something like $1.50 from each print copy sold. So far, I don’t think I’ve earned enough for one lunch at my favorite inexpensive Chinese restaurant). It’s still available. It is the first Cites & Insights Reader, although it doesn’t carry that name. The cover is one of the few relevant designs I’ve done, but also a very easy one to create.

As of now, some 19 copies have been acquired, most of them (but not all) the free PDF.

Since changing my mind on “no more OA for me” in December 2012, I’ve published a fair amount on the topic—and I’ve just finished retagging some 250 items tagged as “OA” into subsets (and reducing the number along the way), so it’s fair to assume there will be more to come. There’s already been enough for a less massive Volume 2, if I was inclined to do that. So far, I’m not.

Here’s a link to the $17.50 paperback; here’s one to the free PDF ebook. The contents of the book carry a CC BY-NC license; as far as I’m concerned, the PDF can be legitimately redistributed.

Note that this one doesn’t show up in my CV because the introduction is the only original material.

Crawford, Walt. Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights, 2001-2009. 2010.

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