So I introduce Xuan-Yen to an Open Access journal called the Anthropology of Food. In actuality, I had a little bit of an ethical dilemma. I am going back for a Masters degree and they, that is the University of Toronto, turned my library card back on a few weeks ago. So, of course, she asked for my info to get unauthorized access to academic journals online.
Here is the story, for those that don’t go to U of T. The main branch of the library, the fourteen floor Robarts, denies access to anyone who cannot flash a student, faculty or alumni card. The printed versions of all journals, if we even continue to receive them, are behind this barrier.
One of the main arguments in support for OA is that members of the general public, like Xuan-Yen, cannot access the electronic versions of journals. However, at U of T, you can’t even access the daily paper delivered versions of the New York Times, because they are on the forth floor, and access beyond the third is restricted to those with a library card. Xuan-Yen is not an anthropologist, nutritionist, or even a professional chef. She just likes to educate herself. She graduated successfully with a BA, and wishes to continue with her personal learning, for the pure pleasure of learning. She just gets excited about food, from the preparation to the history and politics of food. And she cannot do that under current conditions.
Well, partially, because to solve my ethical dilemma I told her about OA. Regardless, why should I be placed in an ethical dilemma in the first place? Having done my undergraduate degree in Philosophy, it is my belief that giving the opportunity for learning to someone should be the highest and greatest gift, and one of the most ethically sound choices.
A lot of what I am going to be researching is the fact that, at the beginning of the university, works were copied freely–in fact, to study almost necessitated free copying, which was a natural action to those working under manuscript culture. Digital culture works much in the same way, where reading necessitates making a copy, in every instance. Copying is essential and fundamental to digital communication.
So what happens? Peter Suber, the academic king of OA, links to her.
Ah shucks…..
pbinkley | 19-Aug-06 at 1:11 pm | Permalink
Note that the physical journals are available to anyone who goes to the desk and asks for them: http://content.library.utoronto.ca/services/others/public/aistacks . Most academic libraries license access to online resources for any onsite user as well, so if you penetrate Robarts you can use the online journals. Those are the solutions currently available to libraries; OA is a better one.
Steven Chabot | 19-Aug-06 at 1:51 pm | Permalink
I am going to deal with your second comment first. The vast majority of computers are Robarts require a UTORID to log in, even to surf the Internet. There are 2, if I can recall, catalogue machines on the first floor, which are only hooked up to the Intranet, and cannot access the Internet. They have a time limit of 15 minutes. In the stacks there are computers on every other floor, some of them reserved for the catalogue, but those are useless, as they are behind the id-check to enter the stacks.
As for the first point, thank you for showing me that page. Of course, this is less than optimal. It is interesting that I just finished S. R. Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science, when having windows for retrieval services at “Mon – Fri at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m., 6:30 p.m.” breaks basically the first law from the perspective of the general public.
It is not that the resources are absolutely inaccessible for member’s of the general public, but that the University does not give the impression that they even want the general public have access. This even extends to alumni who, after paying a hefty fee to get a library card after graduation, do not even have digital access to journals—this requires a second payment to have off-site capability, and even then it is a poor subset of what a current student can access, quote “Information of professional and personal interest is available from these sources.” This does not include, implicitly, academic use but only what is available from ProQuest, a resource that can even be accessed at one’s local library for free.
I can see the perspective of the University, who must consider the needs of those it is mandated to service first, then the public (although does the University also not need to serve the public? Perhaps this is an old-fashioned idea.). However, as we are all coming to know, digital access to documents do not create a scarcity as they do for physical copies.
I don’t think we are in disagreement here, but, from the perspective of the general public—a perspective I was addressing in my post—these are not particularly “solutions.”