Stankus, Tony 1951-

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STANKUS, Tony 1951-

PERSONAL: Born March 9, 1951, in Worcester, MA; son of Frank (a career army officer in Lithuania and Germany and a janitor in the United States) and Anna (an army telephone operator abroad and a homemaker in the United States; maiden name, Rauch) Stankus; married Jeanne Marie Yess, 1972 (divorced, 1975); married Mary Frances Doyle, 1978 (divorced, 2000); children: (second marriage) Andrew Francis (deceased), Peter Cornelius (deceased). Ethnicity: "Baltic-German." Education: College of the Holy Cross, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1973; University of Rhode Island, M.L.S., 1975. Politics: Republican. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Movies, museums, vegetable gardening.

ADDRESSES: Office—Science Library, College of the Holy Cross, 1 College St., Box 30A, Worcester, MA 01610-2322; fax: 508-793-3530. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, science librarian, 1974—. University of Rhode Island, adjunct professor, 1982—.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Scientific Journals: Issues in Library Selection and Management, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1987.

(Editor) Scientific Journals: Improving Library Collections through Analysis of Publishing Trends, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1990.

(Editor and author of introduction) Biographies of Scientists for Sci-Tech Libraries: Adding Faces to the Facts, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1991.

Making Sense of Journals in the Life Sciences: From Specialty Origins to Contemporary Assortment, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1992.

Making Sense of Journals in the Physical Sciences: From Specialty Origins to Contemporary Assortment, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1992.

(Editor and contributor) Science Librarianship at America's Liberal Arts Colleges: Working Librarians Tell Their Stories, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1992.

(Editor and contributor) Scientific and Clinical Literature for the Decade of the Brain, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1993.

Special Format Serials and Issues: Annual Reviews of . . . , Advances in . . . , Symposia on . . . , Methods of . . . , Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1996.

Electronic Expectations: Science Journals on the Web, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1999.

(Editor) The Journals of the Century, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 2001.

Contributor to books, including Creative Planning of Special Library Facilities, edited by Ellis Mount, Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), 1988. Author of columns "Alert Collector," in Reference Quarterly, 1988-96, and "Making Sense of Serials," in Technicalities, 1995—. Contributor to periodicals, including Reference & User Services Quarterly, Serials Librarian, Library Resources and Technical Services, College and Research Libraries, Library Journal, and Library Trends. Associate editor for submissions, Science & Technology Libraries, 1983—; member of editorial board for submissions, Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory, 1991-93.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Research on "encroachments on freedom of scientists to choose their journal outlets by the 'LC' (Library Correctness) movement which favors only not-for-profit publishers approved of by certain library organizations"; investigating "the stability of reputational hierarchies of scientific journals given the growing developments in Web publishing and anti-capitalist sentiments among some librarians"; an analysis of "the degree to which foreign publishers take over American scientific publishing and to which American publications attract foreign submissions."

SIDELIGHTS: Tony Stankus told CA: "I write to try to resolve a love-hate triangle involving librarians in training to serve scientists, the scientists that those librarians will serve, and the publishers of the journals that librarians buy with great resentment to serve those scientists. This soap opera seems trivial to others until they realize that about a trillion dollars a year are involved worldwide.

"The overwhelming majority of students are initially educated in one of three undergraduate majors (history, English, or education) before enrolling in a graduate school of library and information science. There, the formative readings they are assigned to study and told to emulate later as future professional authors are often hopelessly full of facts yet surprisingly devoid of historical context, arduously readable at best, and embellished with all manner of seemingly sophisticated statistical foreplay and computer simulation in a vain attempt to ape the dubious distinction of resembling the depersonalized social science writing and thereby gain academic standing as full-fledged quantitative social scientists.

"This sideshow devalues the cumulative academic advantage and natural inclinations of the students, and it coincidentally scarcely impresses real scientists, who would really favor any training that would genuinely foster high quality, empathetic service. My approach is to take advantage of what the students are already accustomed to, and to explain science and the wants of scientists to these students by literate tutorial writing involving the very human, and sometimes humorous, stories of how given scientists, scientific fields, and scientific publications developed over time.

"I further try to explain that, while science librarians are indeed less well paid than science publishing professionals, at least part of this is due to the relatively greater risk-taking assumed by publishers who face far greater challenges through the possibility of poor market conditions, poor adherence to deadlines by their scientist authors and print suppliers or electronic infrastructure workers or technology, and the unforeseen personal consequences of larger corporate mergers and acquisitions over which publishing employees individually have little control. I try to remind librarians that, while it is often true that publishers get their manuscripts for free from university-based scientists, most university science libraries are effectively funded via overhead monies taken by university administrations from grants awarded to universities for the use of their scientists.

"Yet while both science publishing and science librarianship are both effectively derivative and dependent on the output of scientists, there is little evidence that the scientists are better served by becoming either their own publishers or librarians, particularly if the cost of this diversion of energy is doing less science or poorer science."