Re: Ask a Live Librarian Online

[Tom Williams <twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu>]

> "In theory, a small college could tell its students to get what
> they need from other colleges."
Some do this already.  In our situation, we are the only game in town, and
within a 200+ mile radius, as far as medical library resources and
services.  There are local colleges which regularly use our library (we
are State and therefore open to the public.)

In fact, each year we'll see instructors from other schools' allied health
or nursing programs bringing their students through our library for
orientations.  We've taken the step of not allowing unaffiliated users to
log in to our licenses databases, including full text, even in the
library.

These users must pay a fee to get at these databases so at least we are
not overwhelmed with these unaffiliated people.  They can get at our
online catalog easily enough but not the databases.  We are also fortunate
in Alabama in that we have a state-wide "Virtual Library."  This is
available to any citizen in the State, free of charge, via their local
public libraries.  The AVL contains a number of medically related
databases as well as a myriad of others.  This has further reduced the
reliance of the unaffilated users on our library.  Nevertheless, they
still come.

Tom Williams


Mary Seligman wrote:

> I'm curious about the notion of mailing an article to an 'unaffiliated'
> user.  Would this be considered interlibrary loan? If so, doesn't the item
> have to then go through the user's library?  If mailing out copies of
> articles to anyone who asks is not a violation of the license agreement,
> then why would it be necessary for all colleges to pay for journal
> databases? In theory, a small college could tell its students to get what
> they need from other colleges.
>
> Just a thought ....
> Mary Seligman