Marcia J. Bates writes

> After retiring, I worked full time for 4 years as Editor-in-Chief,

  By which time many of the original submissions were probably out of date.

> We worked and re-worked the contents so as to create as
> comprehensive, balanced, and up-to-date coverage

  but even by the publisher's own admission almost 30% is not 
  original material. 

> Yet only half of the US and Canadian LIS programs have bought the
> encyclopedia, according to OCLC's WorldCat. 
  
  I suspect the $3000 price tag is a problem.

> I know these have been unusually hard times economically, but if we
> are not able to recognize and take up such a huge communal project
> so central to our field--then what does matter to us as a
> professional community?
  
  I can't answer that generally. Personally I am in the field to make 
  information freely available to people. Therefore I suggested
  right from the start to make the chapters freely available on
  E-LIS, a system I co-founded. 

> Rather than an encyclopedia to be consulted only occasionally, it
> should be thought of as a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of
> all the specialties in the information disciplines--a review that
> can be consulted frequently, with the articles widely used in
> classrooms.

  Given the breadth of coverage of the field, most of us just
  don't need these articles. We can barely keep up with what
  is written in our own narrow areas. 

> ASIST members were kind enough to award it the "Best
> Information Science Publication of the Year" award for 2010.

  Well these were probably the authors voting for their own
  chapters. 

  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel                    http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                http://authorclaim.org/profile/pkr1
                                               skype: thomaskrichel