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Due to a New Jersey state budget cut of $1 million, University libraries will lose access to 11 major science and business databases, representing more than 10,000 full text educational journals, if the funding is not reinstated.
The NJ State Library received funding from the state legislature to develop the New Jersey Knowledge Initiative program which provides access to academic resources for NJ college and university libraries, small businesses with 50 or fewer employees, small science corporations and to several regional public libraries, said University librarian Marianne Gaunt.
In 2005, members of the New Jersey Assembly and Senate Budget Committees supported the Knowledge Initiative program and helped secure $6 million in funding over two years.
Gov. Jon S. Corzine allocated $3 million for the databases in his fiscal year 2008 budget, according to the NJ Knowledge Initiative website.
But because of state budget issues, $1 million was cut from the allocation, said Karen Price, an NJKI program consultant.
The databases are paid for, but after Feb. 28 the contract will be up and they will be shut down if the $1 million is not reinstated. More than 300 businesses and New Jersey colleges registered will lose access, Price said.
Without the databases conveniently providing access right to the computer desktops of faculty, researchers and business people alike, many well be at a disadvantage and the loss will have wide-reaching effects, said New Jersey State Librarian, Norma Blake.
It will become more difficult to develop new technologies, small businesses will be weakened, major research institutions will lose access to vital resources and New Jersey will have to pay $34 million more annually, according to an NJKI fact sheet.
The program has garnered overwhelming support. Blake said she has received hundreds of letters from graduate students, life science professors, deans and business people about how their work has benefited from NJKI.
"These are major, major databases. We need to have them. These are not what I would consider optional. Nature Online Journals, MEDLINE, Biomedical Reference Collection - these are the major journals in the field and it's critical our faculty and students have access to them," Gaunt said.
This past summer, University libraries testified at the budget hearings in support of the databases, Gaunt said. One of the members, a scientist working at a small corporation, said he was attracted to New Jersey because he could have access to the wealth of information he could not afford on his own.
"We had managed to get this fabulous program supported because we convinced the state legislature that there is a relationship between access to high quality information, both business and scientific, to economic and business development in the state," Gaunt said.
The State Library does not have enough funding to pay the remaining costs, so members of the library community and University librarians are urging the public to contact the Governor and state legislators to bring awareness to NJKI's plight by advocating on behalf of the program.
"Some of our senior faculty are very concerned about this situation and have written letters to legislature and the Governor," said Associate University Librarian-Collection DEV/MGMT, Robert Sewell. "We would certainly hope that more would do this. To restore $1 million dollars in the huge state budget seems like a rather small amount for something that would have such a big impact."
By January, the state will have reached a decision. If it does not turn out as the supporters had hoped and the funding is not restored, there is an alternative: the University could access the journal articles through interlibrary loan, although it would be much less convenient, Sewell said.
"With the state paying for this particular package, it has relieved our budget in a way that is very important to continuing these resources," Sewell said. "If we had to come up with that money on our own, it would be impossible."
The State Library was able to provide these 11 databases because they negotiated with the vendors on wonderful terms, which resulted in saving money, Gaunt said.
For one year of database access, if all of the libraries in NJ that used NJKI, negotiated with the vendors on their own without help from the state, it would cost close to $75 million, she said.
Without state funds, the University would need to spend almost $700,000 on the databases and if the money is not reinstated it would cost the library between $150,000 and $200,000 to continue the contract to the end of the fiscal year, Gaunt said.
One of the databases is a large E- Journal package from Wiley InterScience that alone costs $170,000 annually, if the University were to acquire it themselves, Sewell said.
The University's collection budget spends approximately $3.5 million each year on subscriptions to various electronic online resources. They aren't just free on the internet, he said.
New Jersey is the first state to offer a program like NJKI, Gaunt said. It is recognized nationally with other state libraries trying to follow in its footsteps.
"Everyone in the state government talks about the need for collaboration to save money, and we have saved $68.5 million for the target audience that we have and [the articles] had 10 million uses in 18 months," Blake said.
In 2006, Government Technology magazine gave NJKI an award for best IT collaboration and The Council of State Governments gave them its 2007 Innovation Award for an exemplary new program, Gaunt said.
Gaunt had hoped not for a budget cut but, that NJKI would be expanded with more databases for the business community and higher education.
"It's such a valuable program and the state should be proud of it. It's just a win-win situation for everyone because it's so cost efficient," Gaunt said. "It's smart thinking and so we hope that maybe the fiscal environment will be a little better in next year's budget and by publicizing as much as we can, we might get it expanded."
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