Student campaign restores ‘vital service’ after library blunders
LexisNexis was cancelled without warning or consultation
Following a series of financial and organisational blunders by the Social Science Library and OU Library Services, an important online student resource was cancelled over the vacation without warning. It was re-instated only after a campaign that inspired 500 students to sign an online petition. LexisNexis Executive is an online archive of international media and news sources, different from Lexis Nexis Professional and Butterworth used by lawyers to access Case Law and online journals.
The Social Science Library found it had not properly budgeted for the subscription to LexisNexis Executive at the end of February. The SSL removed the individual responsible when the failure was identified. OU Library Services did not provide the funding needed to renew the subscription to LexisNexis Executive, leading to its cancellation. In another blunder, the SSL was hit by £300,000 in “e-journal penalty fees”.
These were far higher than OULS anticipated, and contributed to the financial crisis which led to the cancellation of the service. The fees were charged by Project Muse, an online journal service, and incurred after the number of downloads made by students exceeded the amount allowed by copyright law. The SSL attempted to appease students by offering limited online replacement services.
These offered access to 92 international newspapers, failing to cover much of the archive material offered by LexisNexis Executive. The decision was not announced until a month later, in the middle of the vacation, at which point it provoked immediate student protest. A campaign was started Lee Jones and Carolyn Higgins, graduates of Politics and International Relations at St. Antony’s and Nuffield College.
Lee Jones and Carolyn Higgins pressured Social Science Librarian Margaret Robb and Acting Director of OU Library Services Ronald Milne, as well as starting an online petition, which after only a few days had collected over 500 signatures. This prompted secret talks between OULS’s acting director Ronald Milne and the Social Science Librarian Margaret Robb, following which the subscription to Lexis Nexis Executive was restored.
Campaigner Lee Jones told The Oxford Student, “OULS’s 2011 Vision aims to increase access to resources and to be more transparent, not to slash services by diktat. The cuts reflected more concern for the financial bottom line than the interests of students, many of whom could not continue their research without these vital tools.
I’m pleased this shameful decision has been reversed, but the lesson to take away is clear: if you want something, you have to fight for it - but collective action does work.” Robert Milne, Acting Director of OU Library Service, denies the charge, but said, “The cancellation of the Executive News Service was the result of an unfortunate chain of errors and misunderstandings on the part of OULS.
OULS regrets not having consulted appropriately over this matter, particularly as we have since established that the statistics supplied by the service provider were incorrect. ... A mistake was made, and it has been rectified.”
20th Apr 2006