Concern focuses on recent dramatic increases in the use of academic libraries by the general public. A nationwide phenomenon, libraries like Willamette's are increasingly popular with unaffiliated users as convenient access points to the games, free e-mail, erotica and sports scores readily available over the Web, as well as the expensive, often specialized, electronic databases to which public libraries tend not to subscribe. The open door policy that has long characterized many college libraries worked well in a library world defined by card catalogs and printed periodicals indexes. Many information resources today, however, are available exclusively through a finite number of heavily used computer terminals. The growing number of full-text databases contain documents that must be printed if they are to be consulted with any degree of ease.
Concerns swirl around the cost of printing and issues of equitable access to scarce resources.
These concerns are causing some libraries to charge for printing, limit access to terminals, restrict the use of certain resources, and even deny entry to non-primary clientele. This is a thorny issue. Many academic librarians are deeply committed to the concept of libraries as a public good and feel a professional, indeed a moral, obligation to provide generous service to an unaffiliated public. Others, faced with mounting pressures for accountability, argue for restricting services and cite as reasons the recreational and sometimes disruptive use made of the library by the public, workload issues, limited funding, scarce resources, and the fear of compromising service to students and faculty. A number of factors complicate decision-making in this area.