Free, Fair Trade Adelante Coffee
It's dead week here in Bloomington, but come alive in Swain Hall Library with a cup of organic coffee as you prepare for exams and finish your term papers. "...our coffee has a light aroma, with vanilla accents and a sweet, bold entrance that introduces weighty body and a profile that is as unique as the name." [see the Equal Exchange page]But wait, how can we possibly give away coffee? It reminds me of the debate over the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3); some libraries and laboratories are reluctant to get involved with this because, they claim, it's an untested and possibly unsustainable business model.
It seems to me what's unsustainable is the old publishing business model where scholars turn over their intellectual property (in the form of research papers) to for-profit businesses (i.e. the large science publishers). Then the scholars and their institutions have to buy back access to the published paper in the form of journal subscriptions. Prices for many of these journals went completely out of control in the 1990s. That's why we have the current serials crisis. SCOAP3 is trying to address this problem.
Anyway...back to coffee. Adelante...Spanish for "Onward and Upward".

0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home