Author: jessamyn

TimesSelect and institutional access

Posted on by jessamyn

The NYTimes new Times Select service requires a fee for online access to op-eds, editorials and other online content. Home delivery subscribers get access to this content for free. Of course, I live far enough away that home delivery is not an option for me. So I inquired to see if I were a librarian, at a small library, [which I sort of am] if my patrons could use Times Select via my subscription. Answer: no. The same is true if you are a student at a university and get it delivered to your dorm. Of course librarians know that you can get access to the “select” content via Lexis Nexis anyhow, right? Princeton is at least one library lobbying the New York Times to allow some sort of access to content for Institutional subscribers. Perhaps your library should be another?

[Princeton’s] Firestone Library has already contacted the newspaper to determine if institutional access rates might be established for the Princeton campus, said Kevin Barry, head of the Social Science Reference Center.

“It is our intention to lobby hard for an educational institution arrangement,” he said. “I expect that our concern over how TimesSelect restrictions have upset daily patterns of reading key features and opinion pieces is shared by most academic libraries. I hope that those of us who represent the library and its community can prevail successfully upon The New York Times to find a way of opening up the website fully to institutional subscribers.”

conservativism and ALA and the profession and you

Posted on by jessamyn

The Lonliness of a Conservative Librarian ends “[W]e should welcome diverse viewpoints within our profession.” I’m sure it would suprise nobody to learn that I wish ALA was different too. So, I joined some committees, tried to keep my wisecracks in check, worked with people who I vigorously disagreed with in the name of getting things done and, to a certain extent, sucked it up that ALA wasn’t exactly like I wanted it to be, because I felt that I could help make it better. I was also aware that I got more out of ALA than I would gain professionally without it, so on balance it was worth the headaches, the fustrations and the cost. I re-evaluate this decision a lot but it’s one that I made consciously.

Everyone needs to make their own balance sheets about these sorts of things. I empathize with people who have strong enough political convictions that they feel like a paraiah, but it’s a big profession out there and the jerks, naysayers, trolls and halfwits [on all sides of the political spectrum] are a small small minority of the people you get to meet and work with. Not letting them get you down is a good part of public service work, as is learning how to not be that jerk in the first place. No one’s ever going to bury me with a headstone that says “She was polite” but I try very very hard to treat all my fellow professionals professionally and I think it’s a good place to start from.