I don’t see why all libraries need to have paper copies.

I work for an academic publisher, and this has been one of our greatest challenges over the last decade – the move from a print journal model to the online model. The big issue has been that more and more, people want to access at the article level, rather than to read the journal cover to cover. Most universities subscribe in a block or a consortia, and one will archive the print version, and all will receive access to the e-version. It’s also what has spurred the advent of all the new online “Collections” that you see. None of the publishers wanted to pay the aggregators to house their content, so they all came up with their own collections.

However, you’re right, pretty much everything is still available on JSTOR.

The new push now is for books at the chapter level, although I have my doubts that will move as quickly as did the journals. Chapters are less independent than journal articles. Unless you are talking about encyclopedias which do very well electronically, a lot of the academic book publishers are really in their infancy when it comes to archiving and actually even making their texts available electronically.

Access via databases such as JSTOR is certainly very convenient, and online journals are increasing in number. Given that most university libraries don’t have the vast storage space of a copyright library like the British Library, it seems sensible to think about ways in which to increase access to information. Of course, there are still important issues of concern with regards to electronic preservation, but as long as there are some copies available in print somewhere and/or there are libraries which ensure that they preserve electronic sources and update them to ensure that they can continue to be in useable formats, I don’t see why all libraries need to have paper copies.

Your argument that academic writing on romance may help to preserve important texts in the genre is one I want to think more about. Is that how analytical academic writing functions in regards to nongenre fiction?

Given that this isn’t an area I’ve studied, I’m not sure. I do, however, get the impression that universities play an important role in the formation of what constitutes the “canon” and if a text is placed on a school or university curriculum that’ll tend to increase its visibility and encourage publishers to keep it in print.

Thinking about medieval Spanish texts, many of which were once very little known but whom have been brought to greater attention (at least in academic circles) by someone choosing to write about and/or produce edited versions of the texts, it does seem to me as though academics can play a significant role in the preservation and diffusion of texts.

@Laura Vivanco:
I loved it, and the best thing is that I have a whole new source of books for my TBR pile — the Harlequin Historicals!

It’s funny that you say ebooks might be better for preservation. When my uni went through one its budget recissions a few years ago, many print versions of academic journals were abandoned in favor of e-only subscriptions. The librarians argued that the e-versions were not as good as print versions for archival purposes. Perhaps this has changed.

Your argument that academic writing on romance may help to preserve important texts in the genre is one I want to think more about. Is that how analytical academic writing functions in regards to nongenre fiction?

I tend to think one important mark of literary greatness, even within genres, is longevity[...]. I may have to revise that assessment given how wonderful, but how ephemeral a cultural artifact, My Lord Footman proved to be.

I have great hopes for ebooks as a way for Harlequin/Mills & Boon to preserve their massive backlist. Not that this particular novel is available as an ebook, but I have the impression that Harlequin have been working at getting more and more of the backlist into ebook format.

The ephemeral nature of the novels is also one of the reasons why I think the romance genre needs more scholars working on it, so that we can pick out the gems, place them in the literary critical/intellectual setting they deserve and, hopefully, preserve them for posterity. Yes, that’s a really unsubtle hint