I think it’s time to picket the Memorial Library.
Funny how “What’s in it for me?” motivates activism. While I’m not really painting a picket sign, I’m looking into support of “The Alliance for Taxpayer Access” as well as other grassroots efforts to open up publicly funded libraries to remote users. More and more of my search results point me to electronic journals that are only available behind the Ivy Curtain. The University of Wisconsin — Madison Libraries subscribe to all of the journals I’ve needed, but lacking a UW NetID, I’m forced to travel in order to look within their electronic pages. Running into a JSTOR or Project Muse authentication page while web surfing is like surfing in Santa Monica and running into a piling on the Santa Monica pier.
I have a library card for the University Libraries, and I’m an alumnus, but the e-journal police only permit students, faculty, and staff to have remote access to University’s collections.
Dorothea Salo notes, “Journals are losing face to other knowledge-distribution mechanisms because of speed differences, access differences, quality-of-service differences, cost differences, social-networking differences, all sorts of differences.” Nevertheless, journals contain authoritative material and hidden clues to the boundaries of understanding that just aren’t available elsewhere.
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