[Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 8:51 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- On Tue, 8/3/11, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net>
>> Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net>
>> I guess I would like editors to have access to archives and
>> databases
>> such as those ProQuest sells. Not sure how that would fit
>> into our
>> budget.
>
>
> I would like to second that as well -- this is a very important way in which
> the Foundation could support high-volume content contributors, and which
> would make a significant difference to article quality.
>
> This should be a part of university outreach as well. Many university
> students have log-in IDs enabling them to log into academic databases from
> their homes. Please tell universities who would like to support Wikipedia
> that this is a really important way in which they can support the project,
> by allowing established content contributors access to these databases.

I don't mean to derail this thread off-topic ... but I'm a Wikipedian,
I can't help myself :)

Most (all?) university libraries sign contracts with database/journal
vendors restricting access to only faculty/staff/students at the
university. The library pays according to how many people that is.
Giving access to others is generally a violation of that contract, and
could variously: a) cause the library to lose access to the resource
altogether, if the publisher determines that many 'unauthorized'
people are gaining access or a great deal is being downloaded; b)
cause the student to be sanctioned by the university for mis-using
their log-in ID. So, uh, yeah, let's not do outreach asking for this.

Sadly, most pay-for-privileges schemes like Aude describes, at least
for American universities, are only for checking out books, not access
to e-resources.

(You can probably figure out what this means yourself -- to get access
to databases, the WMF would likely have to negotiate similar
contracts. For reference, my university employs a full-time person +
several other people's time just for this job. Are we special? yes.
Are we likely to get publishers to talk to us and do special things?
Probably! But it's not totally simple.)

/librarian :)
phoebe