Academia Urged To Offer Library Services To Graduates

Academia Urged To Offer Library Services To Graduates in ShelfLife, No. 125 (September 25 2003):

"Today's college and university students graduate expecting, even demanding, to have continued access to the kinds of information-rich facilities they grew accustomed to and relied on during their student days. So says Clifford Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), who argues that more must be done to accommodate these expectations. Lynch notes that the transition from an information service within higher education to one broadly available to the public is not always simple or quick. For example, there was a gap of some years between when college and university graduates first started creating demand for the Internet and when the commercial market place was prepared to service this demand, particularly at reasonable prices. Currently the demand for information services focuses on content rather than computation and communication, creating a market for the licensed, proprietary digital content that schools do not own but pay licensing fees for under contract with the publishers and other service providers who hold the rights to the content. Because many suppliers are not set up to license to individuals or want to charge absurd prices, libraries, both public and academic, represent a potential resource to serve both their graduates and the public at large. Lynch suggests that higher education institutions and their faculty have an obligation to put on their agenda the issue of making their information services available beyond their academies' walls. (Educause Review Sep/Oct 2003) http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0356.pdf"