Access to libraries
ljma...@ucdavis.bitnet
going to try to survey this group without letting my opinion show, but I
feel so strongly about it, I can't.
The problem is that there are more and more restrictions being placed on
"outside" (i.e., non-affiliated) borrowers. It's not just UC, either. I
recently heard that Stanford has placed a $200 fee on people who want to
use the library or $500 a year if they wish to borrow materials. One of
the main libraries at UC Berkeley is completely unaccessable to the
public. Recently, we began limiting outside borrowers to 5 items (10 if
they join the Library Associates -- a fund raising group) and placed
restrictions on being able to place holds and recalls on material that is
charged to another borrower.
In my mind, if this trend continues, university libraries will be off
limits to the majority of the public.
How can we have a true democratic society without *free* access to
information?
I would greatly appreciate it if you could respond with your opinion on
this issue, and let me know if your library has any of these kinds of
restrictions, or are contemplating them.
Thanks,
Lucia MacLean
Circulation
UC Davis
ljma...@othello.ucdavis.edu
W.C. (RUSTY) DIVENS
>limits to the majority of the public.
>How can we have a true democratic society without *free* access to
>information?
>I would greatly appreciate it if you could respond with your opinion on
>this issue, and let me know if your library has any of these kinds of
>restrictions, or are contemplating them.
>Thanks,
>Lucia MacLean
Lucia...nothing is free. What we have traditionally been calling 'free'
is simply stuff that is funded elsewhere. And as those funds disappear,
the burden is placed on the user.
There are many factors to consider. What is 'basic access'? What is
beyond basic? What are the rights of private institutions to limit their
collections? What are their responsibilities? Is this a states-rights
question? Does the state of California have a responsibility to meet
the information needs of a Pennsylvanian?
Remember, we had a democratic society long before there were institutions
of higher learning in every hamlet, and a library in every town. I suspect
that it will continue so. Whether or not it is an INFORMED democratic
society is another question entirely.
But SOMEBODY is gonna have to foot the bill.
Rustbelt Bill
N93774@PITTVMS
black...@vms.csd.mu.edu
at the Main library and limit check-out privileges to alumni, retired
staff/faculty and those who demonstrate a need for materials. This privilege
costs $1 (one time charge).
The restricted access has enabled us to cut down a lot on theft in the library.
This theft was usually not our books but from student's bags! Needeless to say,
this has also meant that the local "street" population no longer gains access
to our library.
I have always been ambivilant about the restricted access policy which we have
had since JUly 1990. On the one hand, we have cut down on some theft problems
but we have also, in effect, targeted the disenfranchised ie poor. What, in
part, gave impetus to the policy was that some thieves were becoming somewhat
brazen in their activity. One guy tried to hide a VCR under his coat! On
another occasion, 3 guys were huddled around a VCR trying to figure out how to
disconnect it from the (old) TV. It soon became apparent that a fear of
eventual violence was not an unreasonable fear.
Steven Blackwood
Marquette University
SHO...@uthscsa.bitnet
not too long ago and quite a few libraries responded with information on fees
they charge "outside" users and the restrictions placed on them. Here at the
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, we allow area phy-
sicians to use the Library for free. Some students from other schools in a
cooperative group also receive free privileges. All others pay a fee of $15
per year, and are restricted to three books checked out at a time.
If I remember the trends correctly, there was a large difference between
fees charged by public and private institutions. Most public colleges and un
i-
versities charged fairly nominal fees (there were exceptions), while private
institutions charged much larger amounts.
If I might play devil's advocate for a moment: Why is restricting access
to "outside" users necessarily bad? Consider the following points:
1. Private universities do not run public libraries. They exist to serve the
scholarly community at that institution. They are only "public" to the extent
that they accept taxpayer funded grants. Tight restrictions to ensure that the
primary user group has best access to the library's materials and human re-
sources would seem to be in order.
2. Public universities, on the other hand, ARE taxpayer-funded. However, thouse
funds are intended to serve a specific purpose, supporting research and educa
-
tion. The universities and their libraries have a responsibility to ensure that
that money is used primarily for those purposes. To stretch an analogy--we a
ll
pay some taxes to support NASA. I believe this gives us the right to know what
NASA does, and perhaps tour its facilities. It does not grant us the right to
read all their internal documents, or to become astronauts. We may apply to do
these things, but funds to support it are limited.
Creating some restrictions to ensure that university faculty, staff, and student
s have the best access at their institutions seems appropriate here too.
3. What constitutes an unfair restriction? Here at UTHSCSA, the $15 is charged
to those who wish to check things out. If a user wishes to use materials on-
site or copy them, they need not pay any fee.
My two cents worth.
David Shontz
UTHSCSA
Doris Weingart
we recgonized that that they were fierce competitors with our own students
and faculty for our materials. While we too were loath to place these
restrictions we recognized that our overriding responsiblity is to
make these resources available to our faculty and students first and
foremost. We are funded by the great, if poor, state of California
to support the research and instructional needs of faculty and staff,
not the community at large. If in their wisdom, our state legislators
believe we have this responsibility as well, they shoudl provide us
the funds to do so.
Unlike Stanford, we do not make community members pay to come in to the
library, if I interpret your information correctly. Access to our
mateirals is free. HOwever, if community members wish to check
materials out they must purchase a borrower's card through Friends
of the Library. I frankly don't have a problem with this. If the
whoops! what I meant to say was, Community members always have the
option of using their local public libraries (for which they pay
taxes) and also using their ILL services. This is not a great
o[ption for them admittedly, but it's the best we can offer.
Doris Weingart
UCRiverside
wein...@ucrvms.bitnet
Edward Moore
same access to all Library services as students and Faculty. The only
limits are the number of books they are able to have out and a lower
amount of outstanding charges before borrowing is blocked. All this for
a $10.00 fee. The University of Maine System is contemplating a
system-wide courtesy card, with various limitations. We may go to two
levels of Courtesy Borrowers: system and local.
Ed Moore
USM
edw...@ursus1.ursus.maine.edu
JUDI SHAFFER
enrollment) has charged access fees to the public now for about 3 years.
We were forced to do this because of the strain outside access was putting
on both staff and materials. Our fees for checkout are:
General Public $100.00
Senior Citizen 80.00
Alumni 25.00
Clergy 25.00
Our fees for access/no checkout allowed are:
General Public $ 35.00
Senior Citizen 25.00
Alumni -free-
Clergy -free-
Dependents -free-
(of Stetson students
and membership card
holders)
All categories fees are annual and non pro-rated. Though we charge fees
for memberships, we do not at this time limit the number of items that they
can check out at any one time. We do, however, limit the services to which
they have access. We do not extend them the privilege of using InterLibrary
Loan or accessing online services such as Dialog.
Judi Shaffer
Head: Circulation, Reserves, & ILL
Stetson University
DeLand, Florida
sha...@stetson.bitnet
June DeWeese
by non-affiliated borrowers is an economic one. Here at the University of
Missouri-Columbia, we can not afford to purchase duplicate copies of titles
and are cancelling journals every year. By trying to make materials available
for our primary clientele (faculty, staff and students), we have to restrict
some things that we didn't have to restrict when money was more plentiful.
As a land grant university, we have an open door policy and anyone can walk
in and use our materials. And, I hope that never changes. However, we don't
let unaffiliated borrowers borrow bound journals or software. We have a copy
service right by the front door which helps a great deal. We refer unaffiliated
borrowers to the public library (which is excellent and is in fact a regional
library facility) for interlibrary loans, software, av of all types. They
charge 50cents for each ILL, but it is still a bargain service. Because
we have such an outstanding public library, I don't feel too guilty that
we restrict the things we do--if we did not have a public library or it
was less than excellent, I would feel as the writer of the previous letter.
June DeWeese, Head of Access Services, UMC
Nancy Sensel
material in the library free of charge. We will also help them use the CD-ROM
systems. We do have a copier and we do charge $.10/page to copy material, but
we also charge our UKSM-W patrons $.067/page as well. For non-UKSM-W patrons,
we charge them if they wish to check out material from our library, to have us
obtain ILL material for them or to have us run an online literature search for
them. We are a state institution and believe that people should have free
access to our material, however, in this time of shrinking budgets, we do have
to charge for use of our services beyond the basics.
My 2 cents worth.
Nancy Sensel, Head of Lending Services
UKSM-W
SEN...@UKANVM.BITNET OR SEN...@UKANVM.CC.UKANS.EDU
Chris Hanson
reciprocal agreements with other educational institutions in San Antonio
whereby we allow their students, on presentation of a card issued by the
other library, permission to check out materials (limit of 4). We are
currently working with the three community colleges in town to allow all
students to be treated as though they were registered at all four institu-
tions. We also have a Friends program ($25) which allows 4 checkouts at a
time, and, of course, anyone who walks into UTSA may use materials in the
Library.
As others have said, someone has to pay for the services we provide, and
I am not unhappy about charging people who are not my "primary clientele"
for removing materials from the library, as long as they can walk in and
use things here.
Huge fees (like the ones you cited) are sometimes charged for people who are
getting advanced degrees at "univeristies without walls," since those univer-
sities are also without libraries and do not bother to make their own
arrangements with local institutions for their students. The students are
then thrown on the mercy of the local institutions and, since they need
services at a fairly advanced level, they may be charged what the local
library believes is close to comperable to charges incurred through tuition
or student fees by their own students. This seems reasonable to me.
I think your concern is most valid as we move to replacing books with computer
files. Again, if people can walk into the library and use all of the "normal"
services, I feel good about our ability to hack away at our mission, as a
state-funded institution, to serve the public. If, however, there are files
they can't get to in automated form that are "standard" tools, I begin to get
worried. Happily, UTSA is keeping that in mind as it moves into the brave
new world.
If you would like to add my nightmare to yours, I'd be glad to have help worry-
ing about control of information in the future. Will all the students get be
what someone enters into a computer? WHO is the someone who will do the enter-
ing? If we cancel print and tape and merely access what the vendor stores,
will the vendor always save everything, so students 100 years from now will
have access to the stuff of history? If digitizing (is that a word now?) books
is the means of preservation, will we eventually toss all those books that
aren't "worth" digitizing? And if you REALLY want to worry about money and
patrons, how about worrying about students' paying copyright charges they
don't need to pay for those great document delivery services we are using to
replace owning journals? and since our computers count better than they do
almost anything else, will we eventually be paying royalties for checkouts?
AND.....
But people and information belong together, and libraries make the connections.
*------------------------------------------------------------------*
CHRIS HANSON
HEAD, ACCESS SERVICES VOICE: (210) 691-4584
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO FAX: (210) 691-4571
SAN ANTONIO TX 78249 BITNET: 1LICXH@UTSAVM1
*-------------------------------------------------------------------*
Barbara A. Jackson
state. There is no fee and users may have up to 10 books at a
time. We did away the the small few we used to charge when the
state legislature began to talk about allowing all teachers in
the state free access. We decided it would be too difficult to
figure out who was or was not a teacher - so we went with free
access to everyone and limiting the number of items they could
take.
These "cardholders account for less than 8% of our use. They are
subject to recalls and fines. Failure to return or renew leads
to referral to the University Bursar for collection of lost book
fees and fines. Referral to the Bursar blocks further use.
Eventually if the books are not returned, the amount owed can be
deducted from their state income tax refund. It's not as good
as holding up registration or grades, but we do note an increase
in return of long overdue materials shortly after tax time.
Most of our cardholders are not problems. We require a photo
I.D. when they register with us and a back-up address.
Most cardholders are appreciative of the access we give them and
are very conscientious. Part of the University"s mission is
service to the public. This is one way the library does it's
part.
Barbara Jackson
Circulation Librarian
Loretta Klarenbach
University of Alberta
In response to the question from Davis on access, I think one of the
issues which youdidn't address is availability of materials to your
primary borrowers. We charge our "outside" users/secondary borrowers
for cards $100 -$200 a year depending on who they are. We will also be
restricting to 10 the number of items our general public can have out
at any one time.
We have found these restrictions to be necessary because we can no longer
affford to purchase multiple copies, or the same number of materials we
did several years ago. Since our enrollment is still increasing, we must
of necessity restrict borrowing of secondary borrowers. We also find that
the colleges/technical schools are not building up their core collection, and
instead are sending their students to use our materials. ( We give the
librarians patron cards which they in turn give to their students to use
in our library). These college borrowers are using the same materials
as our undergraduates, but our undergrads pay tuition which includes a
library fee.
This may not be a problem at your institution, but we just don't have
enough materials to meet everyone's needs, so we restrict our "outside"
borrowers.
Loretta(403)492-5282
___________________________________lkla...@vm.ucs.ualberta.ca
Virginia K. P. Rigby
part to prohibiting patrons, including their own undergraduates from access to
certain libraries altogether.
Example, when I lived in California (not that long ago), it was my
understanding that a graduate library at Stanford would not let anyone in
through their doors except graduate students and faculty at their institution.
A visiting professor needed to be cleared before they were allowed access for
research purposes only. Undergraduates were not allowed use of the graduate
library. Yes, they have their own library, but how many of the really bright
ugrads remained in the ugrad library where you went to school?
The purpose for this policy is, on my part, pure speculation. But I'll bet it
has to do with protection of the collection from mutilation and theft.
Everybody wants a souvenir of the great Stanford and photographs just aren't
enough.
The problem of theft and mutilation of materials plagues our library and our
only claim to fame is "Dan Rather Studied Here" and Sam Houston lent us his
name ('Happy birthday Sam').
Do I agree with this policy? If your collection is valuable, you have to do
something to protect it as best you can. Some libraries choose one way, while
others choose another. Unless there is experimentation to find different
solutions, we would all remain in the same rut with no solutions in sight. At
least Stanford can tell us what they got out of this policy and what they lost.
At Sam, we have access...unless it is misshelved, stolen, or charged out to a
faculty member.
Gin of the Huntsvilles (as in Hounds of the Baskervilles, not Tess...)