Re: A question of licences and Alumni members--FREE ACCESS?

[Scott Wicks <sbw2@cornell.edu>]

I keep hearing the word "free" thrown about.  I don't think that those of
us considering offering access to alumni intend to offer this access free
of charge.  While it may be nice to generate a bit of extra income, most
of us are hoping to offer our alums library services on a cost-recovery
basis.  The infrastructure necessary to offer alumni access to the library
services they've left behind definitely has a price tag attached to
it--one that I don't believe we wish to subsidize at the expense of the
services offered to current student, staff, and faculty users.

We know that there are alumni out there who want access to our
collections, reference staff, and databases.  Among others things, we need
to learn:

1.  how many there are who want these services.
2.  how much they are willing to pay for us to package this access for them.
3.  what infrastructure we need in order to offer these services.
4.  what are the licensing and copyright issues.
4.  if, and to what degree, their having this access undermines the 
    information providers' revenue streams by competing with corporate  
    accounts.  (Keep in mind that many information providers offer
    different levels of their products--one level for academics and
    another level that may be much richer for their corporate
    customers--Lexis/Nexis vs. Academic Universe.)
5.  the extent to which our offering this access has a negative impact on 
    the alumnus' home public library.

We will not find answers to these and additional questions without further
study and further study is what some of us intend to do.  Wish us good
luck.

--Scott Wicks
   PH: 607 255-4960            FAX: 607 255-6110
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                   Scott B. Wicks             ***
               Acquisitions Librarian       ***
             Cornell University Library   ***
                 110A Olin Library      ***
                     Ithaca, NY       ***
                     14853-5301     ***
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