“Eat Yourself Full, Leave Your Plate Empty:” or Why Student and Faculty Appetite for Data is like an Offensive Lineman at a Buffet

Abstract

From an old postcard of Millers’s Smorgasbord (on the Lincoln Highway east of Lancaster Pennsylvania) we see the sign that stands over the scrumptious buffet welcoming all patrons at the restaurant: “Eat Yourself Full, Leave Your Plate Empty.” The notion is simple - take what you can eat - but do not waste food. But in many ways, the whole premise of a buffet is the ability to try, sample, nibble and experiment with foods that you might not order otherwise order. And we all pay the same, even if we are a college football offensive lineman with a legendary appetite.

It is this conundrum that leads us into problems between libraries and the database vendors. Librarians scramble to keep the balance between the student needs of getting and analyzing data with the vendors’ need to keep the systems working and not to be over-burdened with royalty payments to the publishers. Increasingly, we see faculty and students wanting to download more data, but vendors too quick to install restrictions out of intellectual property concerns . In this “Eat Yourself Full” database environment, our students and faculty want to download more and more to analyze and interpret on their own.

The presenters will explore the issues of downloading caps and other obstacles at the business libraries of three large U.S. Public Universities (Illinois, Michigan and UCLA). Among the topics discussed will be the topics that drive this research, the types of resources they wish to use, the impact of the limits imposed on the students and faculty, and the workarounds that connected the user to the data that they needed.