Journal of Hospital Librarianship

Citation

Guha, M. (2002), "Journal of Hospital Librarianship", Library Review, Vol. 51 No. 1, pp. 45-59. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2002.51.1.45.5

Sooner or later the journal gravy train will grind to a halt. At the moment, however, there are huge profits to be made from what, to the untutored eye, would appear to be scarcely viable journals. If, as a publisher, you decide to start, let us say “The international journal of otherwise unpublishable single‐case studies in psychiatry” (real title revealed for a small charge) you will probably find 100 or so libraries in the world that can be persuaded to subscribe to it. This is not much of a market, but it is a regular one. In effect you are selling them the equivalent of four paper‐backed books per year, at a price of considerably over the average paperback cost, without having to market each individual title. You know how many copies you are going to sell, which cannot be the case with a paperbacked book, so you can control your printing costs, and all the rest of the work will be done for you by academics and clinicians eager to build up their CVs. As one editor of a now quite‐well respected journal (name available at a small charge) said to me recently: “If that publisher (name available at a small charge) hadn’t ordered in a second bottle of burgundy that lunch time, I wouldn’t be having to do all this now”.

Academic journal publishing contradicts the normal workings of the market economy because it is supply‐led not demand‐led. As another editor (name available at a small charge) said when I remonstrated with her about the starting up of another specialised journal: “Quite a few of us have been doing research in this area without being able to get it published easily”.

I had never heard her, or any other academic, complain about there not being enough to read in her field, usually quite the opposite, but everyone except me in my institution is under intense pressure to publish. They have to get four research papers in refereed journals by the time of the next university research assessment exercise. I am actually the only scholar left in the whole place publishing only when I want to rather than because I have to, in the intervals of chasing up and filing all these fiddly little journals.

Haworth Press have specialised in extracting just that little bit more from the gravy train by the process of producing special editions of journals which, with a trifle of repackaging, can also be sold off as books. Thus, for example, you can buy Managing Multiculturalism and Diversity in the Library as a book for $69.95 and find that it is also the Journal of Library Administration, Vol. 27 Nos 1 and 2, 1999, available at £150 p.a. as well. Haworth actually publishes 34 different journals in librarianship, ranging from the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Information Resources, to the Journal of Religious and Theological Information, most of which are occasionally double‐published in this manner. I am only surprised that it has taken them so long to get around to hospitals.

I must admit that I do not read as much of the literature on librarianship as I should. A quick skim through the obituaries in the Library Association Record, to make sure that I am not in there, is usually as much as I can manage. This particular specimen seems to me, however, to be even more unnecessary that most. I have read this first issue from cover to cover, and do not feel that I have learned very much. I am keenly interested, for example, in the problems of providing services to clinical staff in community services, or “ambulatory settings” as the first paper here puts it, but did not find any useful suggestions in it on how to do so that I had not already thought of. I have not developed a PR/marketing plan to any large extent, as I already have more customers than I can cope with, but I am sure that I could work out for myself that the primary tools include: newsletters, Internet, displays – bulletin boards; staff meetings, demos or classes, flyers, presentations; informational handouts: bookmarks, brochures, etc., without reading the last contributed checklist here, and nothing very much in between the two enlivened my train journey home at all.

While journals still continue as a form of communication, librarians ought to publish if they have something useful to say. If they have not they ought to set the rest of the world a good example and not publish. There ought to be both specialised and general journals in librarianship (and I know I ought to read more of them) but there do not need to be so many of them. I am sure, however, that Haworth will find enough institutional subscribers for this, mainly in the USA, to keep it going without my giving them a recommendation.