security issues (was JSTOR)

[Jill Emery <Jill.Emery@mail.uh.edu>]

I must take exception with David Goodman on some of the comments he has
made on the list.

We try not to limit access to walk-in users but we all are well aware of
one publisher who is adamant about not allowing walk-in patrons use of
their resource and we've all complied to their requests not to allow
walk-in usage or only to allow authenticated walk-in usage in order to
meet faculty demands for this resource. Most recently, this publisher has
even gone so far as to insist that the instructions for access to their
resource on-campus be on an authenticated web page that only people within
a certain domain have access to. We've complied readily to these requests
because it is better public relations to restrict access to walk-ins then
it is not to supply our faculty with a resource they insist they cannot
live without.

We're a public, urban, academic research library with an institutional
head count near 34,000 and an FTE of almost 27,000. We try our best to
serve an amazingly diverse population but we must be realistic in our
mission. We serve our students and faculty first and our local community
second. We allow unfettered access to the majority of our electronic
resources. However there are a few that we must restrict due to the
license. I do not make walk-in usage a make or break license deal. Our
community users do not have to pay to use these resources while our
students do pay a library use fee that helps underwrite the support of
electronic resources, the terminals on which the resources are available,
and the paper costs. For this reason, we do not charge for any printing.

While the idea of pay per use does resolve many of the issues inherent
with FTE & simultaneous usage pricing, most academic research institutions
are hardly set-up to handle a pay per use model. In order to achieve that
type of pricing model at the University of Houston would require an
overhaul of our entire accounting division. This type of change will not
be feasible for some years to come. In the meantime we struggle to find
the balance between FTE costs and simultaneous usage costs.

What we've found on our completely open public terminals are abuses of
copyright. Community users come in and attempt to print off all of the
greeting cards from Yahoo!; we've had printers freeze up because multiple
copies of the same text have been printed and when asking the community
user why there were 7 copies of the same text, they stated they needed
these to distribute to their friends and family. despite being told that
this type of usage is not allowed, attempts are still made to make
multiple copies of texts. Luckily our printers normally cannot handle
print jobs of these magnitudes so we almost always catch the breach. At
this time we're seriously considering disabling printing capabilities from
these terminals and more than likely will do so in early 2003.

I'm all for free, unfettered access to our electronic resources when the
rules and regulations of access are followed. When breaches occur, we must
limit what is available and to whom it is available. All the signs and web
page instructions in the world do not mean people will necessarily act in
a scholarly way within the walls of a scholarly institution.

As librarians we should guard the intellectual freedoms of our patrons but
not at the cost of the intellectual property owners.

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Jill Emery
Director, Electronic Resources Program
University of Houston  
114 University Libraries
Houston, TX 77204-2000
713.743.9765
713.743.9778 (fax)
JEmery@uh.edu
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