Commission on Higher Education
Public Hearing
New York, NY
December 5, 2007
Good afternoon. My name is Curtis Kendrick. I am University Librarian at The City University of New York, and I would like to thank Chairman Rawlings, Executive Director Reid and the Commission for this opportunity to speak with you today. I am here to speak on behalf of the New York State Higher Education Initiative, of which I am a Board Member, and which is usually referred to by its acronym NYSHEI. NYSHEI is an alliance of the public and private academic and research libraries within New York State. It includes all of CUNY, SUNY, many large private institutions such as Cornell, Columbia, Syracuse and NYU, and most medium and smaller college and university libraries across the state.
As Governor Spitzer has noted, “Excellence in higher education is a key to our state’s future. The state’s network of outstanding public and private colleges and universities are essential to producing the highly skilled work force that will be a major driver of New York’s Upstate economy.” As New York State is reliant upon this network of colleges and universities, so too are our colleges and universities reliant upon a network of academic libraries across the State. Our libraries play an integral part in attracting and supporting researchers whose work yields innovations and new discoveries, and, ultimately, new opportunities for New York’s economic development.
Our libraries serve as a portal to vast stores of information, in print and increasingly, in digital format delivered through the Internet. All of us are aware of the “open web,” especially this time of year when our holiday shopping is made so much easier by Google and Yahoo and Amazon.com. Beyond the open web, however, there exist proprietary resources that more fully support research and the creation of new knowledge. Across New York State, however, access to these proprietary electronic resources is very uneven. These databases and electronic journals and newspapers and collections of primary sources are expensive, so expensive that even the largest and wealthiest university libraries are consistently challenged to provide access to comprehensive sets of these resources.
New York’s academic libraries are not alone in confronting the challenges of providing access to proprietary electronic resources. New York is, however, lagging behind many states in developing our information infrastructure to provide broad access to the electronic resources vital for research and our economic development. The need for us to do better is not lost on the State’s business community. Linda Sanford, Senior Vice President at IBM and former chair of the Business Council of New York State noted, “It’s urgent and necessary that we begin moving aggressively to restore New York as a leader in innovation, entrepreneurship and economic progress. To do this we must better leverage the vast intellectual capital residing in New York.”
What have other states done to build their information infrastructure? Many have taken steps to develop collaborative efforts to leverage public and private resources for cost-effective statewide contracts. The examples of New Jersey, Ohio and Virginia are particularly illustrative. In the late 1990s the New Jersey council of the heads of academic libraries established VALE, the Virtual Academic Library Environment. A few years later the New Jersey State legislature made a $6 million annual appropriation to turn VALE into the New Jersey Knowledge Initiative. Under this initiative, New Jersey colleges and universities, as well as small businesses, have access to electronic information resources. In Ohio, the State Legislature appropriates approximately $10 million dollars per year for Ohiolink, a consortium of libraries from 86 public and private colleges and universities. The libraries in Ohio combine this money with local campus contributions and are able to provide access to about 140 electronic resources. Similarly, in Virginia, the Virtual Library of Virginia or VIVA, helps ensure that all Virginia institutions of higher education have access to needed electronic resources. According to VIVA, “ By working together through VIVA, academic libraries across Virginia have created a powerful business model that eliminates duplication, leverages resources, and drives hard bargains to get the very best value for the Commonwealth's investment. VIVA has consistently sustained a 1-to-5 payoff for Virginia taxpayers: for every one dollar invested, the Commonwealth has received five dollars in value.”
While New York may have fallen behind some other states in establishing a State-wide information resources infrastructure, we do now have an opportunity to close the gap and in so doing promote excellence in higher education while fostering the academic/industry partnership for the benefit of the New York State economy. NYSHEI has developed a proposal, the Academic Research Information Access or ARIA (we’re big on acronyms) that will support and enhance teaching, learning and research within New York while also promoting economic advancement. The ARIA proposal calls for the application of an annual state appropriation of $15 million to be used to secure statewide contracts for leading edge information resources. Individual libraries from New York’s public and private higher education institutions would collectively match the State’s investment. The application of public funding and local campus funding will allow expanded offerings of information resources. The ARIA proposal further extends the benefit of access to high-end information resources to small businesses and entrepreneurs within New York State. We see this as a significant advancement towards New York achieving its long-standing goal of better connecting its powerful higher education sector with the emerging economy sector, and serve to lower the cost of business and foster innovation leading to new products, industries, and jobs.
New York can have an information infrastructure, built on the foundation of our academic libraries, which is unsurpassed. Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neill once said, “Behind every great university is a great library.” With the support of the State, New York’s great academic libraries will extend our support for our colleges and universities in the creation and dissemination of information and knowledge. With the support of the State, New York’s great academic libraries can help foster new economic entities that are competitive nationally and globally. And perhaps most significantly, New York’s great academic libraries stand ready and united to aid the citizens of the State in attaining their goals, realizing their dreams and aspirations, and protecting and extending their rights and liberties as residents of the Empire State. We take to heart James Madison’s admonition that “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge" is "the only Guardian of true liberty.”Thank you.
Curtis L. Kendrick
December 5, 2007