http://sophiebury.ca/2009/08/06/gaining-access-to-academic-libraries-to-swipe-or-not-to-swipe/ Business & Information Literacy Librarian Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:40:08 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://sophiebury.ca/2009/08/06/gaining-access-to-academic-libraries-to-swipe-or-not-to-swipe/comment-page-1/#comment-13 Elizabeth Watson Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:15:15 +0000 http://sophiebury.ca/?p=78#comment-13 I’m glad you are writing about this Sophie, as I have thought about access to academic libraries for years and still not decided upon what I think is the “right” policy. Ideally I agree that there should be freedom of access for the reasons you state but my hesitation in supporting this is based on three major concerns. One is that in our library at least, and I suspect in many others, there are often not enough spaces and/or resources for our students and we have an obligation to support our students first. The second concern I have is that our license agreements for our online resources limit access to current students, faculty and staff and we have an obligation to ensure that we honour our agreements with our vendors. There are obviously ways of ensuring that visitors do not have access but then are we not discouraging them from using our libraries. My last concern is that unfortunately not all visitors to our libraries come with education on their minds. I am referring to the escalating theft of personal property within our libraries. Having experienced a month of escalating thefts of laptops, wallets, and cell phones which we know are attributable to visitors to our campus, I am concerned about the loss and the impact on the students who have lost a year’s work when their laptops are stolen. I’m glad you are writing about this Sophie, as I have thought about access to academic libraries for years and still not decided upon what I think is the “right” policy. Ideally I agree that there should be freedom of access for the reasons you state but my hesitation in supporting this is based on three major concerns. One is that in our library at least, and I suspect in many others, there are often not enough spaces and/or resources for our students and we have an obligation to support our students first. The second concern I have is that our license agreements for our online resources limit access to current students, faculty and staff and we have an obligation to ensure that we honour our agreements with our vendors. There are obviously ways of ensuring that visitors do not have access but then are we not discouraging them from using our libraries. My last concern is that unfortunately not all visitors to our libraries come with education on their minds. I am referring to the escalating theft of personal property within our libraries. Having experienced a month of escalating thefts of laptops, wallets, and cell phones which we know are attributable to visitors to our campus, I am concerned about the loss and the impact on the students who have lost a year’s work when their laptops are stolen.

]]> http://sophiebury.ca/2009/08/06/gaining-access-to-academic-libraries-to-swipe-or-not-to-swipe/comment-page-1/#comment-12 York University Libraries (yorkulibraries) 's status on Thursday, 06-Aug-09 12:57:17 UTC - Identi.ca Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:57:22 +0000 http://sophiebury.ca/?p=78#comment-12 http://identi.ca/notice/7660795 http://identi.ca/notice/7660795

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