RE: Message from Kevin Guthrie, JSTOR's President

["Morgan, James J" <morganj@iupui.edu>]

I would like to speak against one small part of David's argument, that
about simultaneous use.  I am constantly confronted with medical
publishers who tell me that because I am negotiating on behalf of a
medical school with a certain number of FTE, I ought to pay an exorbitant
amount for their product that they are sure all our physicans will use.

I much prefer a concurrent use license, plus logfiles, where I get proof 
that our users are actually using their product.

I might add that a measured use license gives the university a strong
incentive to close down independent proxy servers described in the JSTOR
complaint.

Jim Morgan
Indiana University School of Medicine


-----Original Message-----
From:	David Goodman [mailto:dgoodman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU]
Sent:	Thu 12/12/2002 6:37 PM
To:	liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject:	RE: Message from Kevin Guthrie, JSTOR's President

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.

[SNIP]

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.

[SHIP]

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