Planned obsolescence: Publishing, technology and the future of the academy

Abstract

Kathleen Fitzpatrick was October’s speaker for the BC Research Libraries Group lecture series.  She is the Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association.  Fitzpatrick’s talk was “Planned obsolescence: Publishing, technology and the future of the academy.”  Her publications include a book of the same title (2011) and The anxiety of obsolescence: The American novel in the age of television (2006).  She drew on her experiences publishing her own books to argue that scholarly publications models must change.  Highlights of her talk are summarized below.