[Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Juergen Fenn <juergen.fenn at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>
> Am 08.03.11 20:20, schrieb phoebe ayers:
>
>> Most (all?) university libraries sign contracts with database/journal
>> vendors restricting access to only faculty/staff/students at the
>> university.
>
> This may hold true for the U.S., but as far as Europe is concerned the
> situation is different in some points. E.g., in Germany all residents
> are entitled to access some commercial databases that a national license
> has been obtained for, cf. <http://www.nationallizenzen.de/> and
> <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationallizenz>. What's more, university
> libraries are open to all residents in its vicinity, offering on-line
> access at least on campus to every user of the library.

Yes, on-site access is also true in the U.S. for public
(state-supported) universities. Additionally many public libraries
offer access to research databases, though these may not be scholarly
enough for Wikipedia work.

> As far as Wikipedia is concerned, the German chapter of Wikimedia has
> just negotiated the first settlement for a premium database provider in
> chemistry, see
> <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Kurier#Chemie_eLitstip_per_Codc.21>.
> There are plans to expand this programme.
>
Cool!!!! I look forward to hearing more about this.

(And I'm certainly not saying it's impossible for the WMF, just saying
it's not only a question of money)

-- phoebe