By Lake DiStefano
Nation & World Editor
Recently, I was informed about a function of the library, by a professor, that I had been previously unaware of. Through the library here on campus, students are able to digitally access external journal publications, such as The New York Times. Through this feature students can read text scans of articles from such publications from as recent as the same day.
This revelation was especially troubling to me, a student who is set to graduate following this semester, as I have purchased subscriptions to said publications for several semesters now, in order to complete assignments in various classes that required we found current New York Times articles, which the platform evidently gatekeeps behind a paywall.
The New York Times can be accessed via ProQuest, an external application which can be accessed via a portal on the library’s database when you search “New York Times” under the journal search engine.
From here, you can simply scroll through text scans of articles, and while graphics and photos aren’t included in this, it’s still largely better than purposelessly spending the subscription fee.
For context, a subscription for the New York Times is typically around $1 a week, and while this seems inconsequential at first, for a class which runs the entire semester, this can quickly become a costly reality — let alone the fact that, again, it is completely free through the library, which renders any point about the price moot. No student should have to think any amount of money is needed to access these resources.
That’s not all though, as beyond my frustration with the lack of communication on a larger level regarding the libraries faculties, I’ve also noticed a trend within the College itself that troubles me equally: Professors seem unaware of these resources themselves.
I can only speak to my own experiences within various classes throughout my time here, but whenever a professor has given me an assignment that requires current stories, from places like the New York Times, they’ve always spoken about it as a necessary extra cost we’d have to take on as students, similar to the philosophy behind textbooks for classes. It was a required reading, in a way, so this made sense to me at the time. I never really questioned it and simply signed up to save myself the headache and grades.
The language is the problem here, since those professors spoke as if buying a subscription was the obvious option when giving these assignments. Despite my annoyance at, what I now perceive as wasted money, I still give those professors the benefit of the doubt.
It’s the only logical conclusion, really. What’s more likely, every professor I’ve had as a journalism major sinisterly conspired to scam me out of more money, or they all were just as unaware of these resources as I was? Personally, I lean more towards the latter.
Which, in turn, makes the issue arguably more pressing. How is it that faculty and students alike are both unwillfully ignorant to this time and money saving resource which the library offers?
Access to the library and its various resources is covered via the tuition bill students receive at the start of every semester. Which then begs the question, how much money did I spend on tuition to gain access to a feature I never knew existed?
When speaking to my friends, both in the journalism major and not, they unanimously said that they weren’t aware this was a feature, and similarly wished they had heard about it, so they could’ve avoided the same mistake of paying for subscription services, which are already covered by their tuition.
To be frank, if I wasn’t informed of this, and told how to do so, I simply would’ve never known to do it. Now, I’m sure there’s some unavoidable convolution that needs to happen with the process, in order to verify that whoever’s accessing said resources are actually students paying for them, but they’re certainly must be a better way to communicate to the students that they even have the ability to do this.
When I arrived on campus my freshman year, there was really no explanation given as to the full range of the library's capabilities. I was thrown into the proverbial deep end, and naturally found myself more scared than anything to attempt to navigate its resources myself, especially in the context of assignments with looming deadlines.
Was I simply expected to eventually stumble upon the ability to access these journals?
Either way, surely there could be something, some required seminar or workshop, dedicated towards informing incoming freshmen about these features, and how best to utilize them?
No student should be led to believe that they need to spend any more money out of pocket, for features which are covered by the very bill which makes them students.
