Commission on Higher Education
Hearing at Nassau Community College
November 15, 2007
My name is Chris Filstrup, and I am the Dean of Libraries at Stony Brook University. I thank Chairman Hunter Rawlings and Executive Director John Reid and the Commission for this opportunity.
In addition to my position as Dean of Libraries at Stony Brook, I am on the board of the New York Higher Education Initiative (NYSHEI). This is an alliance of almost all of the college and university libraries in the state, and its membership includes all the SUNY and CUNY libraries, large private university libraries such as Cornell, Columbia, Syracuse, and New York University as well as medium-size and small private college libraries. The recent creation of NYSHEI is an important step toward a future of state-wide access to electronic resources which support and stimulate research and economic development. In other states such as New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginia, state-wide availability of these resources is well-established. To be competitive, New York needs to follow suit.
It is common knowledge that we live in an information age, an age in which every student, every worker, every citizen needs to know how to evaluate and process large amounts of information. Increasingly, this information is available on the Internet. College and university libraries still purchase and house lots of physical objects such as books and maps and musical scores. But in addition, they now license and manage access to a wide variety of scholarly information which sits on servers throughout the country and world.
My remarks today focus on this digital environment. This environment of electronic resources opens up the possibility of state-wide access. Information in digital form behaves differently from information in print form. It is easier to publish and distribute; it is easier to discover; and it is easier to share. Specific to NYSHEI’s proposal, it is easier to license collectively.
The kind of electronic resources I’m talking about are not cheap or free. The free or public Web is well known. Less well known is that sector of the Web that hosts proprietary resources to which access is enabled by licenses between academic libraries and information vendors. These resources support research and the creation of new knowledge. They keep businesses abreast of technological advances. This part of the Web is essential to the state’s academic and economic well-being.
Like all academic libraries, mine is furnished with computer workstations, and students fill these seats from early morning – well, these are students and I’m not talking 6am, rather 8:30am – until we close at 2am. They are hungry for the information we license and provide. Faculty can no longer do their teaching or research without these resources. And I’m not just talking about the scientists and engineers. Humanities faculty use enormous collections of primary literary and historical texts. Social scientists find the journals they need online. Art historians download images from large repositories of images that academic libraries license. So, the context for state-wide access to tested and reliable information is a rapidly expanding body of information which is not free but which can be managed on a state-wide basis.
Among the universities and colleges of the state, access to these electronic resources is very uneven. These databases and electronic journals and newspapers and collections of primary sources are expensive, so expensive that only the largest and wealthiest university libraries can afford comprehensive sets of these resources. Even the largest SUNY libraries struggle to find funds to license a full complement of electronic journals and databases to support their broad arrays of PhD programs. At smaller universities and colleges, the situation is often dire, depriving students and faculty of valuable information.
NYSHEI proposes that New York, following the lead of New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, and other states, create a central fund of $15M to help college and university libraries move from individual library licenses to collective, state-wide licenses. The $15M will enable two changes in how we acquire and provide access to these resources. The first is to incent individual campuses to move from local to state-wide licenses. This will be accomplished by using the central fund to match local campus funds to create state-wide contracts which will both reduce the cost to the individual library and bring access to those campus libraries which currently cannot afford access. For the vendors and libraries state-wide contracts are a win-win opportunity. They reduce the vendor’s overhead costs by moving to a single license for many customers. For the purchasing libraries, negotiating as a collective significantly reduces the cost of the license per library. Once there is a successful track record, NYSHEI will be able to bring its member libraries into other state-wide licenses.
The second change is to extend these licenses to small businesses and entrepreneurs who have big information needs and small bank accounts. New Jersey has created a successful program which gives small businesses and entrepreneurs passwords to use to access electronic journals and databases which are otherwise restricted to campus students and faculty. With a central fund, New York academic libraries could help create an attractive business environment in which a small library investment will lead to large returns to small businesses and entrepreneurs. This will generate jobs and keep our college and university graduates in state.
I believe Chairman Rawlings is a James Madison fan. The national monument to the great constitutionalist is a library building, part of the Library of Congress campus. Madison understood well that the American democracy was a brave experiment, that its ability to survive and thrive was not a given. The new nation required an informed citizenry. To quote the fourth president, “…a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” I think Madison would agree with NYSHEI that for New York State to prosper, politically and economically, all of its citizens need access to good information from authoritative sources. This is the expertise of college and university libraries across the state. With a central fund of $15M, these libraries can work together to lower their costs, bring the smaller campuses up to the level of the larger, and extend access to the small business community. New York’s future lies in educating knowledge workers who will build and sustain robust, information-rich businesses. Travelers on this highway will need the very best information, information which college and university libraries provide and manage.
E. Christian Filstrup
Dean and Director of Libraries
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-3300