From the ALA Alert:

Effective yesterday, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have proposed fiscal year (FY) 2008 spending bills that direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to change its Public Access Policy so that NIH-funded researchers are required to deposit copies of NIH-funded research into the online archive of the National Library of Medicine.

The bills now go to the full House and the Senate for approval. To help ensure success there, we ask that all supporters contact their Representatives AND Senators with support of the proposed bills by phone or fax as soon as possible. The House is expected to convene on Tuesday, July 17, so we ask that Representatives be contacted no later than MONDAY afternoon.

This is a really important (and interesting) piece of legislation. Government funded research is supposed to be freely open to the public, but there have been barriers to access for a long time. Removing those barriers is in the best interest of those who want to see faster progress in medical research and more collaboration between scientists. Voluntary deposit is not working.

Over the more than two years since its implementation, the NIH’s current voluntary policy has failed to achieve any of the agency’s stated goals, attaining a deposit rate of less than 5% by individual researchers. A mandate is required to ensure deposit in NIH’s online archive of articles describing findings of all research funded by the agency.

This is one piece of legislation that is a move in the right direction — towards the open exchange of information in a manner that benefits the citizens of this country. It is a big step, and one that is overdue.

On a related note, this legislation makes me wonder about all the extraordinary research that could be made available if we could all get our administrations to mandate support of our digital repositories. If university-funded research were made accessible quickly, easily, and to the entire web, what great things could come of it? Here’s hoping that this legislation not only passes, but that it sets an example for others to follow.

The question of “library as place” has been bounced around for quite a while now. It is an issue that gets right to the heart of why patrons would want to spend their time at the library–what can they find within those four walls that is not available on the internet or in a bookstore? While the addition of cozier spaces and coffee shops to libraries brings them in line with their competition (Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc.), we need to think of ways to go beyond this. We need to find ways to create a library space that not only provides the same creature comforts as the places our patrons actually *like* to spend time, but also that draws on the unique characteristics of a library. As the article states, we need to go beyond “coffee and wireless” to develop a dynamic library learning space.

A recent Inside Higher Ed article makes the point that academic libraries should be “thinking about campus facilities as a means to promote an “integrated” campus. In terms of the library, this means inviting in other related services, such as a writing center, tutoring center, computing labs, etc. This sort of shared space can help to promote the idea that the library is not the ivory tower on the hill, but instead serves as a place for intellectual exchange in a way that is central to academic life on campus.

View the article here.