When Change Happens...
January 2010
Recently, after four consecutive weeks on the road attending meetings and discussing the current state of scholarly communication with colleagues and strangers, I returned to the familiar surroundings of the
Choice office both exhilarated and exhausted. So many possibilities, so much to be done, and so little time. What is one to do in an era when any phrase containing the words “not” and “change” has become an oxymoron?
For those of us involved with scholarly communication today, change is simply a given. Whether the topic is open access, e-books, metadata, archiving, patron-driven acquisition, Web 2.0, or the impact of the current economic downturn, the scholarly communication system is changing. We may like it, we may not like it, we may pay attention to it, or we may ignore it, but we cannot stop it. Reviewing my notes from the past few weeks, I am reminded of the opening lines from Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”:
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
The “stone” wall in Frost’s poem reminds me of the scholarly communication system with which I grew up, the one most familiar to those of us of a certain age. For something there seemingly was that didn’t love it, that wanted it down, and has sent the frozen ground-swell under it. And however much we may have loved (or hated) its familiar textures and shapes, they are being irrevocably altered by technology and economics. Before our very eyes, the familiar is morphing into something new. And while there are some who claim otherwise, no one knows precisely what the new system will look like, how it will work, or even how it will be funded. Nor can we predict the unanticipated consequences that will invariably arise.
We can, of course, be sure of some things. We know the identity of the major culprit, technology. We know too that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is a factor in this latest battle between a disruptive new technology and its mature predecessor. And some of us may take solace in observing that we are “embedded” in another example of Schumpeter’s “creative destruction,” which he saw as the fundamental dynamic of capitalism.
All this is well and good, but how exactly when push comes to shove does one cope with continuous change? Ah, that is the question. And while the first answer that comes to mind is more caffeine, this probably will not do.
So how about this for an answer, dear reader? “Just do it.” It’s short, it’s sweet, and it has a compelling logic. If change is going to happen, why waste scarce time and energy contesting the inevitable? If we instead accept change as a given, stop worrying about the unanticipated (and by definition unpredictable) consequences, and do our best to identify and make those changes that seem most appropriate, will we not have done all that can be required of mere mortals? Some of our experiments will work out. Others will not, but that, after all, is the nature of change, is it not? Change happens.--IER
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