Reading a blogpost on open access reminded me of how closed access is sometimes.
When my younger kid started nursery school, I thought that the 3 hours she was in school could be spent reading up on current research. So I went to a research institution in the city, and asked their librarian if I may just read in their library. He was very nice about it and even got me a temporary pass made. However, he soon got transferred out. The next person was downright scandalised that I was using the library. He said that I must pay Rs2500/ per annum. That was a large sum in 1990 and I wasn't earning a single paisa. So I had to give it up.
His logic was that my reading /leafing through journals would make it necessary for more frequent rebinding and costs would go up. He really said this!!
This institution is funded by public money. I am a member of the said public. No one is likely to browse through JCS Dalton or Spectrochimica Acta to pass the time of the day till the movie started, or some such thing....JACS is not Femina! In fact after a gap of 6 years, I had to struggle to get through a review article and usually took quite a few visits to complete reading one. So why would the librarian not encourage the few people who wished to read journals? It is the effect of being in a bureaucracy. Never look at the big picture...only read the fine print.
When my younger kid started nursery school, I thought that the 3 hours she was in school could be spent reading up on current research. So I went to a research institution in the city, and asked their librarian if I may just read in their library. He was very nice about it and even got me a temporary pass made. However, he soon got transferred out. The next person was downright scandalised that I was using the library. He said that I must pay Rs2500/ per annum. That was a large sum in 1990 and I wasn't earning a single paisa. So I had to give it up.
His logic was that my reading /leafing through journals would make it necessary for more frequent rebinding and costs would go up. He really said this!!
This institution is funded by public money. I am a member of the said public. No one is likely to browse through JCS Dalton or Spectrochimica Acta to pass the time of the day till the movie started, or some such thing....JACS is not Femina! In fact after a gap of 6 years, I had to struggle to get through a review article and usually took quite a few visits to complete reading one. So why would the librarian not encourage the few people who wished to read journals? It is the effect of being in a bureaucracy. Never look at the big picture...only read the fine print.
2 comments:
I agree. I remember having the same trouble convincing the Librarian at my institution - a large, Indian, publicly funded one - that he should allow my wife, who wasn't working at that time, to use the library. Since then I have steadfastly held to the rule that if an institution is funded by public money, it has no business withholding reasonable access to the public, especially for use of a facility like a library. This is something we practice where I work currently.
This seems to be common, though not universal. Many years later when I mentioned this to a deputy director of another such Institution, he welcomed me to his library.
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