The Open Access Imperative and Education

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Recently, a question was raised on liblicense as to whether open
access is necessary outside of the field of medicine.

The answer is:  YES!!

While the moral imperative of open access is perhaps most easily seen
in the field of medicine, the same arguments apply across the
disciplines.

One example is the field of Education.  Even at the very 
wealthiest universities where students and faculty have access to 
all the literature in this field, access to the scholarly 
literature for the practising educator, parents and other 
professionals involved in education (such as school-based social 
workers), is for all practical purposes limited to what is freely 
available.  Evidence-based practice is this area - teachers who 
are able to keep up with the latest in their field and look up 
answers to issues that come up in the classroom - requires open 
access.  School library budgets tend to be very limited; a school 
library that has all the resources that it needs to meet the 
needs of the students is indeed fortunate.  A school library with 
sufficient resources to meet the needs of teachers and 
administrators is truly exceptional.

Fortunately, ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Centre, 
has been making education indexing freely available for some 
time, and is now providing as much full-text as possible.

The ERIC website can be found at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/

Education is a common human need, and is of necessity taught at 
many post-secondary institutions that are not so wealthy.  Here, 
freely accessible resources can make a huge difference in the 
quality of education for the future educator.

Outside of the wealthy, developed world, free access to scholarly 
educational information could well be the key to making it 
possible to training new educators.  In our global world, we need 
an educated populace around the world.  If our neighbours 
understand about environmental issues and how to identify and 
deal with a potential new pandemic, we all benefit.  This 
understanding requires education, starting with the basics.

What goes around, comes around.  Fortunately, lately a good deal 
of what is going around is free access to the best of the 
knowledge of humankind, our scholarly literature.

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, 
and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic 
Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather G. Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com

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