Includes bibliographical references and index.

Section I. Libraries and their collections, now and in the future -- Being essential is not enough -- My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings -- The crisis in research librarianship -- The portal problem : the twi n plights of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the library collection -- On necessity, virtue, and digging holes with hammers -- Can, should, a nd will -- How sacred are our patrons? Privacy rights? Answer carefully -- Crazy idea #274 : just stop collecting -- Local and global, now and forever : a matrix model of librarian "depth perception" -- A quiet cu lture war in research libraries and what it means for librarians, resea rchers, and publishers -- Interrogating the American library Associatio n's "core values" statement -- Asserting rights we don't have : librari es and "permission to publish" -- Frenemies : the perfect and the good, the noisy and the important -- What PDA does and doesn't mean : an FAQ -- Reference services, scalability, and the starfish problem -- Kitten in a beer mug, or, The myth of the free gift -- You might be a zealot if ... -- It's not about the workflow : patron-centered practices for 21st-century serialists -- Can't buy us love : the declining importance of library books and the rising importance of special collections -- On knowing the value of everything and the price of nothing -- Preservati on, yes--but what shall we preserve? -- The struggle for library space -- Section II. Scholarly communication and library-publisher relations -- On advocacy, analysis, and the vital importance of knowing the diffe rence -- Signal distortion : why the scholarly communication economy is so weird -- Six mistakes your sales reps are making--and six that libr arians are making -- Prices, models, and fairness : a (partly) imaginar y phone conversation -- Print-on-demand and the law of unintended conse quences -- Quality and relevance : a matrix model for thinking about sc holarly books and libraries -- No such thing as a bad book? : rethinking "quality" in the research library -- No, you may not come train my staff -- On the likelihood of academia "taking back" scholarly publishing -- Is a rational discussion of open access possible? -- Copyright, CC- BY, and stolen advocacy -- Open access rhetoric, economics, and the def inition of "research" -- CC-BY and its discontents: a growing problem f or open access -- Deceptive publishing : why we need a blacklist, and s ome suggestions on how to do it right -- The NPR model and the financin g of scholarly communication.