In Zach Cohen’s guest column “Know your fees,” from June 21, he questioned the merit of the Library Technology Fee.
The fee has been transformational for the University Libraries and provides meaningful benefits to students, including software for computers in all campus libraries, a popular equipment loan program, work stations (including Macs in the Terrapin Learning Commons and other libraries), staffing to support new initiatives, and scores of student jobs.
About 55 percent of the fee supports collections and databases, which underpin the research and learning goals of the university. Databases are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — whether a student is in a library, at home, on a shuttle bus, or studying abroad. The Library of Congress doesn’t offer that kind of access to our academic community, and it shouldn’t.
Our databases and e-journals are supported heavily by the campus and partially by the student fee. A number of factors influence their use. Academic Search Premier, especially popular with students, logged nearly a million searches in the past calendar year; Business Source Complete had about 200,000. Other databases naturally have more limited appeal, but to our research community of students and faculty, they are nonetheless essential.
Patricia Steele is the dean of the libraries.
