ACCESS | Asia 's Newspaper on Electronic Information Product & Service

At one point, I could have been labelled as a conference junkie. I've worked my way around the world, saying yes to anyone who asked me to give a paper, generally focusing on what I would call 'applied electronic information.' I have written up these conferences for library publications including ACCESS. Now I find that the whole conference scene is getting out of hand. Aardvark website listed 118 conferences for 2006 and over 90 so far for 2007 from the 'First Bloomsbury Conference on E Publishing and E-Publications' to the '100th Annual Conference of the American Association of Law Libraries.' So where does the 9th Fiesole Collection Development Retreat fit in?

The Fiesole Collection Development Retreat is a boutique gathering of a small group of international library directors interested in collection development, selected library directors from the region of the conference and publishers and vendors of academic products. It deliberately maintains a low profile. Conference themes are designed to look at the bigger picture of collection development. It is loosely modelled after the well-known Charleston Conference in the United States, for acquisitions and collection development librarians, which focuses on 'Issues in Book and Serial Acquisitions.'

Invitation only but papers on the web

The Retreat differs from most other meetings as it is by invitation only. However, the papers presented and the list of attendees is available to everyone on the Fiesole website. I received an invitation for this year's Retreat because it was in Hong Kong and I jumped at the opportunity to attend.

Because the papers are available, I decided to satisfy my editor's and my own curiosity by finding out more about the Retreat itself. I asked a series of questions to retreat co-organizer Rebecca Lenzini (publisher of The Charleston Advisor).

RAP: Please tell us about the origins of the retreat.

RL: The Fiesole Retreat Series on Collection Development takes its origins from discussions held between Katina Strauch, founder of the Charleston Conference (now in its 27th year), and Mario Casalini (now deceased), the head of Casalini Libri booksellers, during a visit to the Casalini Libri headquarters in Fiesole, Italy. Fiesole is an Etruscan city situated in the hills above Florence. Mario Casalini was a long-time supporter of The Charleston Conference and wanted to bring a version of that meeting to Europe. 1999 marked the first retreat, with the goal of providing an international, small, and informal meeting of leading library, scholarly publishing, and information industry participants devoted to thinking through and debating the 'new world order in collection development for libraries.'

This year marked the ninth retreat and first visit to Asia. The only other retreat outside of Europe was in Melbourne two years ago. The retreats are invitational, in order to preserve a smaller participant list which attempts to be balanced among both the various constituents (i.e. library, publisher, and vendor) and countries represented. In this way, the meeting remains unique in focus and hopefully in substance and debate. To view previous years' topics and papers, please visit the repository, maintained by Casalini Libri.

RAP: How does this retreat differ from the Charleston Conference in terms of speakers and participants?

RL: In terms of participants, The Charleston Conference is targeted to acquisitions, serials and collection development professionals and is much larger than Fiesole (for example, 2006 drew 1,019 participants). Fiesole is targeted to director-levels within the library, vendor and publisher communities and is kept at a smaller level (i.e. 65-75 or so) to encourage more interaction.

The structure of the two meetings and speakers differs also. The Charleston Conference follows the familiar format of large conferences with main sessions and, in 2006, over 200 concurrent sessions. It includes exhibits in the first half-day at the same time as pre-conferences. In 2006, there were 75 exhibitors.

There is overlap, however, between Fiesole speakers and participants and The Charleston Conference. In fact, the two meetings do share key-noters. Tony Ferguson (Anthony W. Ferguson is University Librarian at University of Hong Kong and former Head Collection Development at Columbia University), as an example, is active at both conferences.

RAP: My editor suggested that Fiesole is exclusive and secretive. It certainly is not secretive since the proceedings are on the website. But it certainly is low key. How are participants selected?

RL: The participant list evolves as the meeting moves geographically. At the centre is a core of interested and committed individuals, many of whom attended the inaugural meeting in Italy. These individuals were invited primarily due to their known interest in publishing and collections, and our opinion that they were interested in collaborative discussions (this was during the time when many library meetings had identified publishers as 'enemy number one' as you may recall.)

We openly invite professionals from the surrounding geographic area - usually, the local host site handles this for us. For this year's meeting, host Anthony Ferguson extended personal invitations to other library directors in the region, especially, Hong Kong and Australia. When we were in Melbourne in 2005, CAVAL was our local host and Steve O'Connor (now University Librarian at Hong Kong Polytechnic University) played an active role in inviting the Australian participants.

RAP: It seemed more formal then I had expected and I had hoped for more interaction between audience and speakers.

RL: I agree with you! It differs from year to year, however. And some years generate more discussion than others. I think in general, if we get more senior publishing professionals and heads of houses to the meeting, and also industry consultants, they tend to talk more and spark the debate. We missed them in Hong Kong

RAP: Since the readers of ACCESS are primarily Asian, how did the Asian retreat differ from the others?

RL: I think we had fewer publishers than we would normally have if we were in Italy or the UK; partly due to not being as familiar with the local publishers and partly through scheduling conflicts

RAP: I asked the same question of organizer and Fiesole pioneer Tony Ferguson, who has attended these conferences wearing both U.S. and Hong Kong hats. Tony sees more similarities then differences, primarily the focus on the impact of technology/the web upon publishing and what libraries do with what is published/ broadcast He also warned against generalizing about Asia. "I expect people noticed that Hong Kong and China are like London and Germany - near each other, full of the same complexion people but not quite the same. And China is Asian but China and Japan, for example are different"

The sessions lasted one and a half days, with the first day more targeted to the Asian region. Here are the highlights from a few presentations. Check the website for all the presentations.

Information in China no more restricted than elsewhere

In the morning session, 'Language and Communication: Politics, the Dominance of English, and the Web,' Colin Storey, University Librarian, Chinese University of Hong Kong talked about 'The Use of the Global Multi-Lingual Web in Mainland China: The Ebb and Flow of Government Control of Information.' Storey gets the prize for best visuals in his PowerPoint!

Storey believes that information in China is no more restricted then in most of the world and follows a tradition of book burning going back to Qin Shi Huang in the 18th century. His full paper includes many Chinese websites. He listed the following indicators for the future of internet information in China:
1. STM (Science, Technology, Medicine) is always available;
2. What is banned is not necessarily unavailable;
3. While numbers of internet usage is high, who really is using the internet? Users are generally young and urban;
4. Some sites one might think are good are 'bad';
5. There are too many policemen; with redundancy, no one takes responsibility;
6. There is official corruption (internet cafes and local officials);
7. Self-censorship is the most powerful.

Storey also referred to two other relevant documents: a report from a 2001 conference at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson Center 'Scholars Under Siege?'1 and a paper written by Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman of the. Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School2.

The other Colin of the morning, Colin Day, (publisher, University of Hong Kong Press) gave us 'A Publisher's View of the Issue of Language of Publication.' He asked 'Is English Language Publishing Killing Publishing in Other Languages?'

HKU Press is a bilingual publisher with most of its works published in English. Day explained how the press decided what type of material to publish in what language. He predicts that Chinese will not become the global language but will remain strong in China, just as France, Italy, Japan and South Korea have strong local language markets.

As a former economist, Day is interested in the pricing implications for publishing in English and non-English for three types of materials: popular, professional and academic. The press only publishes professional books in both Chinese and English. The other two categories are English only.

Publishers prefer English and want works of interest to the English speaking market Scholars want to be published by international publishers and therefore write for the international (English) market. This deters research about local cultures.

Confusion on what open access is

Session Two was entitled 'Open Access from Asian Perspective.' Mark Robertson (President Blackwell Asia.) entitled his talk 'Scholarly Publishing and Open Access in Asia.' Robertson suggests that there is confusion over what open access is. Open access journals are not free since the creation of the journal is costly.

Robertson focused on the players - authors, research funders, societies and editors and publishers - but omitted the end user. The paper included interesting data on scholar's preferences and changes in publishing by region.

The talk led to a lively discussion of open access, peer review and the role of funding agencies and universities Feedback following the talk was that Robertson presented an old fashioned them/us scenario rather than looking for partnerships that would lead to newer, more sustainable models for all players:

Carol Tenopir (Professor, School of Information Sciences and Director of Research, College of Communication and Information University of Tennessee), the keynote speaker for day two was unable to attend. Liz Chapman (Deputy Director of Library Services, University College London) read Carol's paper, 'Looking Ahead: Studies in the Workplace Help Us Plan for the Future: A Survey Of Medical Researchers And Engineering Practitioners in India, US and China.'

Tenopir is a prominent researcher, combining academic research with real-life practical applications. Since she is a frequent speaker at the Fiesole retreats, I asked her by email what she liked about the retreats.

CT: I value the Fiesole retreat because it is smaller and more personal than an ordinary meeting. It gives attendees the chance to talk and get to know each other and really dig into issues at both the social events and sessions. I get ideas for new research projects or ways to analyze the data I have already collected.

Her paper is a summary of two studies - one for IEEE on hi tech engineers in India, US and China (China data was not available) and the other for CSA to field test the need to index Tables and Figures (T&F) in Europe and US. For engineers, Tenopir concluded that differences are based on disciplines more than geography For the future, librarians and publishers should combine internal and external sources; provide tools for granularity; and have discipline based tools and quality filters

Michael Keller and Ward Shaw, two veterans from the first Fiesole wrapped up the Retreat followed by further insights from Tony Ferguson. Some key findings from the three were: " Conclusions may not match numbers in the empirical analysis presented. Although 140 million Chinese have internet access they are not all scholars. We also cannot make statements about China without knowing their IP and copyright laws. " We are all censors; every country has some form of censorship. " As a follow up to the open access journal discussion, universities have the capability to deal with open access but are doing nothing to change the status quo or accelerate greater open access. " Based on Tenopir's paper we should build services around user workflows. " As much as we want open access, publishers require money to publish; someone has to pay. " Non STM sees non-English growth for domestic markets. " Asia may grow to be net producer of research.

The editor of ACCESS asked me for my opinion of the Retreat. The underlying theme of the Retreat, Collection Development, is taking us back to our roots but within a 21st century context, as Tony mentioned above. My most useful takeaway is something not featured in this article, but a visual depiction of Digital Library collections included in Day One's keynote address by OCLC's Lorcan Dempsey 3, which I am using with my Deans to explain how the digital library expands 'the library' to include external commercial materials, external free and open access materials and a wide range of internally created intellectual assets.

Also relevant was Colin Day's discussion of what University of Hong Kong Press publishes since we are wrestling with issues around how to get young faculty to publish locally, relevant materials when they want to publish in international journals for tenure. At this point in our transition from print to e-models of collections, we cannot have enough discussion about open access journals and what it really means to all players and also continued discussions on e-book models.

Some of our regional vendors, such as iGroup, Thomson Scientific and Swets hold interesting user updates, but they are one sided - the vendor talking at us. As a follow up to Fiesole Asia, an Asian informal gathering of more publishers, aggregators and librarians interested in these issues would be interesting.

Next year's 10th retreat will be back in Fiesole, Italy on March 28-29, 2008. But don't check your mail for your invitation. Check the Fiesole website instead to read the papers.

NOTES:

1. Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson Center, Scholars Under Siege? 2001

2. Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School, Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China. 2003.

3. Lorcan Dempsey and Eric Childress, OCLC, Collections Grid. 2003

Ruth A. Pagell, is the University Librarian, Li Ka Shing Library, Singapore Management University