Comments on: A Library Card Under the Christmas Tree

By: Jeff Hester

Jeff Hester — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:32:26 +0000

The San Francisco Public Library has pretty decent electronic holdings that can be accessed remotely with authentication with your library card number… you don’t even have to be a San Francisco resident (but you have to get an SF library card). Only down side is some of these resources are limited to a small number of simultaneous users.

By: Terence Ahhee

Terence Ahhee — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:12:31 +0000

My husband and his brother were adopted by two separate families at birth, and have never met or even seen each other. For quite some time, my husband had wanted to find the final piece of the puzzle, which would be searching for his brother. I told him one of the quickest ways to search for him, would be by making use of a us public records search. This would save him valuable time and money. It took only a few months, and my husband was able to make contact with his brother. Next month his brother is flying out to spend a week with us.

By: Joseph J. Esposito

Joseph J. Esposito — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:50:50 +0000

Thank you for this helpful comment. Indeed, my public library does indeed have quite a few electronic resources, but they are limited in both quantity and scope. There is an aggregation from either ProQuest or EBSCO, the OED, and many other things, but I can’t get access to most of the journals I would like to see. The fact is that even a well-supported public library is no substitute for the library of an academic research institution. And I repeat: it’s not as though I want access for free. I am willing to pay for this, but no one will take my money.

By: ash966

ash966 — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:07:22 +0000

Are you positive that your local CA public library doesn’t have databases available with at least some of these resources? My library in MN has access to the Economist, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Wall Street Journal*. These are paid for by the state (http://www.elm4you.org/), so even the tiniest library in MN can access them. We don’t have the OED online but another library in the area has it. They allowed me to pre-register online and use the databases before I was able to go there physically.

I would double-check with your librarian to see if they have such access, or there may be a nearby library you can receive borrowing privileges from (or ask here: http://www.asknow.org/libraries.cfm). Public libraries are not always the best at advertising their online resources. If not, it seems to me to be an issue with the state of CA not supporting lifelong learning, and taxpayers might want to ask their legislators whether they shouldn’t have access to at least some databases when their taxes go to the university system.

*I can’t find a database that contains NYROB (http://cufts2.lib.sfu.ca/MaintTool/public/search). Maybe U of C subscribes to the online version?

By: Joseph Esposito

Joseph Esposito — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:20:05 +0000

No, I do not want a subscription to all the resources of a university. That is too much to ask for. And I have tried to subscribe to the electronic resources of academic libraries, but the collections available to “outsiders” like myself are pretty limited (typically a ProQuest aggregation and the OED). It is true that in time formal publishing will account for a smaller proportion of the universe of information, but that is even more true of libraries, as open access initiatives make the residence of a document at a particular institution less meaningful. No, this is a publishing problem and requires a publishing solution.

By: Todd McGee

Todd McGee — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:51:15 +0000

It sounds to me like what you really want is a monthly subscription to a university and all of the intellectual resources at the university. I think you’re talking to the wrong group of people. Why can’t you pay a monthly fee to the UC system and get access to their collections and the services they’ve aggregated? You should be asking for a digital health club model from UC, not a consortium of publishers.Talking to publishers assumes that everything you want is owned/provided by publishers, I’ll bet that’s not completely true now and will become significantly less true in years to come.

By: Doug Jones

Doug Jones — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:37:14 +0000

At the Univ. of Arizona we provide access to the Alumni versions of Academic Search (Ebsco) and Business Source Complete–for our alumni. They are subsets of the full databases.

By: Carol McPherson

Carol McPherson — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:41:05 +0000

Send a copy of your drivers license, a filled out application form (available online) and a check for $40.00 and you can have access to all the Houston Public Library offers to users with remote access. Including the OED. To use that tired library phrase check out all it has to offer.

Enjoy!

By: Karl Bridges

Karl Bridges — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:06:45 +0000

The real issue here is not the cost of the e-resources. The real cost is the support which would include having to provide authenticated access to a large user base — on a world wide basis as well as librarian support (e-mail/chat/whatever) to a huge user base of inexperienced users.

The only sensible approach, as seems to be suggested here, is to have a third party provide access (and support) for a fee — part of which could be rebated to the participating institutions.

For example, you might pay $500 yearly to access Harvard’s Library. Harvard gets a percentage, the company deals with the technical/support issues. It could, in effect, be invisible to the librarians and university users — except for that nice yearly revenue check.

By: Ged Welford

Ged Welford — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:07:57 +0000

Hi Mark

Were you able to join Westminster Libraries online from the US? They seem to be restricting membership to UK residents.