Resources for alumni

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

**  with apologies for cross-posting (to the SPARC OA Forum and Liblicence) 

A recent Liblicense discussion thread has been on extending licensed
resources to alumni.

One of the best and most meaningful gifts a university library can provide
to its alumni is a fully stocked institutional repository.

The alumnus' own best work may well be preserved there.  A link can go on
the alumnus' website or CV - enhancing the impact of that best paper, and
helping the alumnus to succeed.

The works of fellow students and the student's professors will be there.  
The IR will be a resource to look up to find out what people you spent
important years with are doing now.

Will alumni someday want to see their post-grads papers kept, or pointed
to, in the IR of their alma mater?

The alumnus' IR, and more importantly, all of the institutional
repositories together will mean greatly expanded access to the academic
literature for the alumnus.

There are several means of providing expanded access to the scholarly
literature, including other forms of providing open access as well as
including alumni in licensed resources.  There is, however, unique merit
in the institutional repository approach - one reason for proceeding with
this regardless of what might be provided through any other means.

A personal view by,

Heather G. Morrison

"Self-archiving activity is greatest amongst those who publish the largest
number of papers."

Swan, Alma and Brown, Sheridan (2005) Open access self-archiving: An author
study. Technical Report, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), UK FE
and HE funding councils.  http://cogprints.org/4385/  (Thanks to Stevan
Harnad for the link).

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ca/ or send a letter to
Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

***