RE: Message from Kevin Guthrie, JSTOR's President

[David Goodman <dgoodman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>]

Yet there are a number of major libraries that, long before this, have
refused to let the walk-in users, even walk-in users who pay for library
privileges, to use their electronic resources.

There is perhaps some conceivable justification for this for those
resources which are paid for per simultaneous user (which is a unpleasant
way for the publisher to price in any case, and one which we are
thankfully seeing less of). Even here, Heather's comment about the likely
frequency of such use would apply.

But these libraries also prevent such use for resources, such as many
journals, where the number of users are unlimited. Once computer terminals
were available in very limited numbers, but this is not now the case in
any research library I know.

I am also aware of libraries that do not permit those outside to even see
their lists of electronic resources.

This also extends to conventional resources. I am aware of libraries that
restrict the use of those conventional resources that they have placed in
storage to members of their own university community.

Those libraries doing this should rethink their purposes. Research
libraries exist to serve the universe of scholars and promote scholarship.
Scholars and scholarship are mobile, and always have been. Our own users
will need other's resources, and can hardly expect this if we do not
extend the same privileges. It is furthermore the height of elitism in a
period where the number of positions in the scholarly community is not
increasing, to exclude independent researchers. It will also not endear us
to the general public with academic interests if we discourage them--for
our own self-protection, we should be engaging in all practicable services
to the community that make use of our unique capabilities.

We are now at the point where is a student travels to a particular
university to use the run of a particular journal not in his home library,
he may find it has been moved into storage because library now gets the
electronic version, and the library will let him access neither version.

The only alternative that would serve the public is for all universities,
colleges, and large public libraries to subscribe to every possible title,
which would surely be enormously more expensive than resource sharing.
Document delivery and Interlibrary loan are useful in many cases, but not
when the material needed is indexes or journal runs, the core resources of
many forms of scholarship.

It is repeatedly being made plain to us that scholarship, research
libraries, and libraries in general are supported only marginally in our
society. For reasons of self-interest alone we should make sure our
facilities are used as widely as possible.

Yes, the monetary resources at a particular university are intended to be
spent primarily for the benefit of those currently enrolled in that
university. We should interpet this benefit in as wide a sense as
possible. All universities have public events, and permit the public the
use of their campuses. Some of us will remember the difficulties various
urban universities faced when they interpreted their community obligations
too narrowly.

For the library, which should by its nature be the most open part of the
university, to be more restrictive than absolutely necessary, defeats the
purposes of that library and of all libraries, of that university and of
all universities.

I do not mean this to be specific to any particular institution. I am not
aware of any university within my general geographic area that does not
engage in some form of these practices, except those that are legally
prevented from doing so.

My personal view, but I am glad to see that some others do share it.

Dr. David Goodman
Princeton University
and
Palmer School of Librarianship, Long Island University