Licensing e-resources for alumni: Reflections from a pilot project

Remote access to licensed electronic resources for alumni is a recent phenomenon. The classes of graduating students since the mid-1990s have become increasingly familiar with digital resources provided by the library. After graduating, however, they no longer have access to their institution’s portfolio of online research tools, such as full-text e-journals and newspapers, specialized research databases, and reference tools. This is becoming more pressing as former students develop new interests and wish to rely upon the digital resources they were accustomed to using in their student days. A few schools have responded to the demand for providing continuing access to alumni. A survey of 102 top U.S. schools by Catherine Wells revealed, however, that “only 18 currently offer this type of service.”

As mentioned in the article, we wonder how many alumni of any university know what powerful and full text databases they have access to for free via their local public library?

Source: C&RL News

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 and is filed under Databases, Directories, and Guides, Info Management and Retrieval, Libraries and Librarianship, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.