I do not agree that academic libraries have lost their value or importance among academic fraternity. Yes, it may be true that the number of students/faculty visiting university libraries in person has come down because the required electronic information is easily available over the Internet to its users.
In case there is a library which has lost its impression among its users, it may be due to poor management of library collection, infrastructure and services by mediocre library professionals. Academic libraries are indeed the backbone for higher education and cannot be dismissed so easily.
There is nothing wrong if academic libraries are open to general public to a limited extend without jeopardizing the interest of the intended users, i.e students and faculty.
Dr. M Koteswara Rao
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On 06-May-2019, at 11:57 AM, vinod mishra
The idea of making academic libraries ‘public’ is good and a welcome move because they are run by ‘public money’ but, there are many problems of management such as reduced seating space and access to limited print reading material by student members, thefts, etc. further, publishers who license electronic resources to academic libraries will not allow others (public) to access their resources freely. Licensing of e-resources to university libraries in India is already problematic due to FTE count. The legal battle between Delhi University and OUP/CUP on free distribution of xerox copies of text books shows that business and scholarship cannot go together. Although this whole idea of ‘openness’ sounds very good it’s implementation in India will certainly create a storm among academicians and publishers.
Dr M Koteswara Rao Retd. Librarian Univ of Hyderabad
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On 04-May-2019, at 10:52 AM, Subbiah Arunachalam < subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.commailto:subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com> wrote:
Should the public be allowed to use an academic institution's library?
When a similar question was asked of University Librarian Jeffrey MacKie-Mason (UC Berkeley), his reply was 'yes.'
*What about for the public?*
We are a public library and, under our license, the public can come to us and access Elsevier articles on-site. A number of people in public health in the Bay Area come here to read journal articles, for example. They will also lose direct access to a 2019 publication.
The main thing for the public to know is that we’re taking a major stand with the power of UC to transform the scholarly journal publishing industry for the benefit of our scholars and the public. We remain in negotiations with other publishers of UC research articles. The industry is not going to change overnight, but we want the public and the world to have access to research — to our UC research — that is funded by the public in the first place. That is core to our mission at the University Library.
-- Arun
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4398-4658 http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-9925-2009
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