Why should we go through so much effort and agony to teach undergraduate students to use library-provided subscription databases when the vast majority of them will never again have access to those databases once they graduate?
... The lion’s share of the responses I can acknowledge, but only go so far with, honestly. ...
“They need to know that not everything’s in Google!” Okay. But more and more is. I’m very much less than convinced that “good information lies in the Deep Web!” is the line we’re really promoting. I think it’s “Google sucks,” which by proxy means “the open Web sucks,” which makes me as an open-access advocate feel both insulted and disconsolate. Do I think librarian affection for proprietary databases might play a role in general librarian disaffection for open access? And might that have been one of my ulterior motives for asking the question? Why, yes and yes again. ...
As more and more information sets itself free from firewalled silos and unbelievably unusable search screens, I’m not at all sure my tribe is preparing itself to teach real information issues. ...
“They need to know these things exist so that they can complain when they don’t have access to them.” Interesting. And for a repository-rat, a likable response. But come on, people. Librarians are barely complaining. We’re expecting our patrons to? Over databases? ...
“Because we pay for them.” Also an excuse, not a reason; see above about librarian hate for the open Web. Cozy little circle we have going here: we pay for databases ostensibly so our students can use them, and then we force students to use them so that we have an excuse to pay for them. Yeah. Think database vendors might have to learn to stop sucking if we broke this cycle? I do.
I dunno. I live in a very weird place with respect to most of the rest of my tribe, which is deeply suspicious of “open” in all its forms, and still believes that its future is tied to “for-pay” and “proprietary.” ...
I guess I still think I’m backing the right horse—not just on a strategic level, but on an ethical level.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 5/06/2009 03:02:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
