There have been a range of responses to the The American Historical Society’s “Statement on Policies Regarding the Embargoing of Completed History PhD Dissertations.” In this post, Melanie Schlosser, the Digital Publishing Librarian at the Ohio State University Libraries, conducts a brief interview with Dracine Hodges, the Head of Acquisitions at Ohio State to “shed light on what goes into an academic library’s decision to buy a book-or not.” To Scholosser, “What libraries will and will not buy would seem to be the linchpin of the whole discussion: Scholars are afraid to make their dissertations openly available because presses won’t publish them. Press won’t publish them because libraries won’t buy them. Or will they? The policies and motivations of acquisitions librarians seem to be the least well-explored aspect of the whole situation.”
