Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal April 2007 Volume 5(2)

Endpiece

Access revisited

Brian Osborne still has the feeling of being cut off from online research materials.

All right, as a title it isn’t quite as catchy as Brideshead Revisited but it will have to do. In my last “Endpiece” (Information Scotland December 2006) I wrote about the problems of non-academic personnel accessing the sort of research materials that are becoming only available online in commercially produced and controlled databases and e-journals.

My article was a personal response to the feeling that I was being cut out from the benefits of the joined-up, digital, information society but I was greatly encouraged by the reaction to it from a number of colleagues in the Higher Education field who contacted me to say how much they agreed with my comments and to make points about, for example, open source publishing.

I was even more encouraged when, as a result of the article, the Multi Media and Information Technology Group got in touch and invited me to speak at their AGM in March. I have also had a very positive response from SCURL in answer to a letter I wrote to them on behalf of the Society of Authors in Scotland and had a useful meeting with Jill Evans, SCURL’s Service Development Manager.

In the course of preparing my talk for the Multi Media Group I had the chance to do some more thinking about the problem of creating equitable off-site access to electronic materials. I looked at what was freely available through our public library network. To be honest this was not a particularly encouraging experience. Finding these resources on libraries’ websites is often difficult, and when they are found they are sometimes not clearly identified as being available at home.

Again, while there is a useful basic core of reference books available online through Know UK the additional subscription material is very much a matter of local choice. Glasgow offers its members at home access to sources such as Kompass Directory and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, while Edinburgh has a more limited list of sources. Surely we can go beyond this “post-code lottery” and create a uniform level of entitlements? I could not find any authority in Scotland with a list of remote access sources to equal that offered by Manchester’s 24 Hour Library which offers things such as the Oxford English Dictionary, the DNB, The Times Digital Archive and Groves On-line.

Yes, there are additional resources available remotely to registered readers of the National Library of Scotland – including core sources such as The Times Digital Archive but there seems to be little evidence of an attempt to think through a national strategy and a national plan for information delivery at anything beyond the basic level of provision exemplified by the People’s Network roll-out of facilities like Know UK. Of course articles from journals can be obtained, at a cost, from the British Library Document Supply Service, but, in a delightful Catch 22 you may only know that the article you are interested in exists if you can access one of the indexing or abstracting services – which of course are now mainly online sources – and where do you access them?

Carl Clayton of SINTO had a telling letter in Update 6 (3) March 2007 pointing out that while academic libraries were, in the age of print sources, the natural and obvious place for providing non-academics with access to research materials it was rather anachronistic and inappropriate for them to discharge that role now. Inappropriate because they have other pressures on them and anachronistic because in the digital age content can be delivered to any internet-connected computer. Clayton argues that there is a clear role for public libraries and national libraries to become involved in licensing access to research materials for use outside the HE sector.

I have come to realise that my thoughts in my last column were hardly radical enough. Yes, of course, it would be great if I, as a subscription paying member of a university library, could get access to this type of material but that hardly addresses the issues of access for those who because of geographical remoteness, physical incapacity or financial stringency are unable to make the sort of use I do of a University Library. Glasgow University is a 20 minute car journey for me. If I lived in Campbeltown it would be a 280 mile round trip.

I do realise that this whole issue is a complex one and that the needs of a limited number of researchers and enquirers who could benefit from access to high level research materials may not figure largely in the concerns of the movers and shakers who make policy – but it is an issue which ought to be addressed and in which Scotland could take a lead and set an example. After all we have a long and proud tradition of making the fruits of research and scholarship available to all; check out the catalogue of the Leadhills Library.

It is a matter of real regret that in the digital age, when it should be infinitely easier to deliver these materials, we have allowed the commercial exploitation of scholarship to limit the dissemination of knowledge.

Brian D Osborne e: brian@bdosborne.fsnet.co.uk

Information Scotland Vol. 5(2) April 2007

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