[1232] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Fwd: Chronicle Article
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gregory.A.Finnegan@Dartmouth.EDU)
Wed Sep 16 13:22:46 1992
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1992 12:16:43 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
From: Gregory.A.Finnegan@Dartmouth.EDU
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
A footnote to A. Ralph Papakhian's comment about paying the piper: he quotes
Bill Arms' statment "Departments and
individuals who invest THEIR OWN RESOURCES" (my emphasis)
I would have thought that dept'al. resources are allocated by the university
for the greater good of the whole enterprise. Or do depts. have their own
development offices and endowment managers? As I said before, Arms is
certainly right as to the predicted behavior & attitudes of faculty; as for
the rest of us accepting that in other than real-politik sense another
matter!
I have often thought about the money "wasted" on local resources of wider
interest. Had to send a patron once to campus police office, as they, but
not we, had the prof. journal for campus police (there is one, of course)
which had several needed date-rape articles. Fortunately they'd kept the
issues and were cooperative. Another library I once worked in had an
arrangement with the univ. business office to get the non-current issues of
the appropriate (and expensive) journal they subscribed to. But I know
many departments which have unofficial "libraries" which either duplicate
resources we have, or, worse, have ones we don't. Either the money's paid
twice to gratify someone's turf & ego imperatives, or it's paid for resources
most members of the univ. community don't know about and may be denied access
to. Is that proper use of "community" money???
There remains the doubtless messy situation of grant-funded stuff (tho' as I
recall my field equipment on "my" NIMH grant reverted to the university upon
competion of research.)
All this to underscore what I posted earlier: librarians have the best
perspective on information resources for the population(s) they serve, and
others, who Arms rightly notes can now 'get into' the info biz much more
easily, have neither the training, the experience, or, frequently(?), the
desire, to manage resources for general use.
Greg.Finnegan@Dartmouth.edu
