Below appears the text of a letter that I have sent to the Louisiana Board of Regents. It comes in regard to massive cuts to the library budget, something which I oppose both because I have gained from such access and because other people deserve to similarly gain.
An Open Letter to the Regents of the University of Louisiana:
According to information provided by Susan Richard, Associate Dean of Student Libraries at the University of Louisiana, the LOUIS network is facing the loss of more than three-fifths of its online journal access in the next two months. The loss, which eliminates access to tens of thousands of electronic books and journals (including the most prominent and widely-used databases for research int he humanities as well as the most authoritative dictionary of the English language), is due to the withdrawal of funding from the Board of Regents.
The course of action is not acceptable.
The mission of the university as a whole is two-fold: the development and dissemination of human knowledge. The two components are inextricably linked, since knowledge cannot be spread without being created and achieved. In brief, the university, to be able to function, must be able to make possible both research and teaching. Vital to that two-fold mission is a library that provides access to significant amounts of scholarly materials, and the databases to which access is about to be denied constitute perhaps the most efficient means of securing that access.
That access, and the mission of the university which such access supports, is key to the continued improvement of the state of Louisiana and its people. While it is admittedly true that there are budgetary concerns being faced by the state, the greater Gulf Coast region, and indeed the whole of the United States, withdrawing funding form public institutions of learning is not the means to resolve them, particularly not if the desire is to resolve them in a long-term manner that would inhibit the return of such conditions as the state, region, and country currently face.
This is particularly true in light of remarks made by William P. Kelly, President of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, in the Fall 2009 issue of Folio. He speaks as the president of a university which is itself facing a number of financial woes, much as are the schools in Louisiana. In his comments, though, President Kelly notes that "Prosperity, social stability, the very sustainability of the planet depend upon our capacity to generate new knowledge and to expand educational opportunities" and that public universities--such as those affected by the pending cuts to LOUIS--"have generated a disproportionately large share of American
research." And as you, along with the rest of the people of Louisiana, the region, and the nation benefit greatly from such research, you have a vested interest in maintaining the ability of the students and professors of the state of Louisiana to conduct it.
Without access to the journals provided by LOUIS, they will not be able to do so.
It is imperative for the continued improvement of the people of the state of Louisiana that they have access in their public institutions to the knowledge being generated by leading scholars across the world. LOUIS is perhaps the most powerful tool available to provide them that access; by withdrawing its funding, you are cutting the students in the state's public universities off from that knowledge, from being able to enter into the ongoing conversation of scholarship in the rest of the world.
And it will happen at a time which will exert a maximum negative impact upon the student body. For when, in two months, access to databases vanishes, it will be just at the time when students have gotten settled into the new academic year, just when they will begin to work on their own assignments; instead of turning to the library as has been the case for generations and in
the most productive undergraduate careers, they will have to go elsewhere--if they can find such an elsewhere. The graduate students upon whose labor many departments depend for teaching introductory classes will not be able to conduct the research that helps to elevate the names of Louisiana universities in the esteem of the wider scholarly community. The professors who teach them, and whose work also points to the scholarly potential of Louisiana colleges, will find themselves unable to continue to do their own research.
None of these things are good for Louisiana's universities, and what harms the universities will ultimately come to harm the people.
But this can be prevented. All that needs to be done is to restore funding to the programs that support the core mission of the university: to create and spread knowledge. And restoring funding to LOUIS will, in large part, do that.
Regards,
Geoffrey B. Elliott
PhD Candidate, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
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