Message to the WMU Alumni

WMU library, working closely with the WMU IT department, is completing the planning phase of a major overahul of the WMU library collections and services. We will be purchasing or leasing more online materials, including e-books and electronic journals, and will be collecting and cataloging relevant documents from the public domain. We also hope to scan older, deteriorating materials from our print collection. And we are updating our web site to be more informative, intuitive and useful.

The plan includes a formal extension of library access for the alumni. For starters, the new web site will include a form for information requests, which all registered alumni can take advantage of. We will be working on "aggregating" and indexing maritime data from our liscensed databases as well as from the open web, and intend to make this a publicly searchable resource. The goal is to have a one-stop shop for locating maritime information. Whether we can allow access to the full-text, however, will depend on the publishers and the subscription databases that the library does business with. We will try to negotiate the most liberal licensing agreements we can obtain. In most cases, it will be a matter of paying more money more for more users. The library will fund what it can out of its annual budget, and put out the call for contributions if and when we need them.

In some cases, it might be more cost effective for the alumnus' department or agency to obtain a direct licensing agreement with the commercial entities that hold the copyright on desired information. The library will help broker these licenses upon request.

The grandest phase of the plan will be the creation of a repository -- or rather, an alliance of repositories -- for yourmaritime data. Information in the traditional print format is getting prohibitively expensive, even though the originators of the content traditionally receive little or no pecuniary compensation. Many of the big publishing houses are offering more online content, but owing to organizational structures based on the print paradigm, they do not seem to be in a position to offer the steep discounts which "internet publishing" should allow. However that issue gets worked out in the years to come, when it comes to the statistics, directories and other information which you gather in your workplaces, there is no reason that it has to be collected and sold back to the maritime community at prices only the most well-funded offices can afford. Working with other maritime educational institutions and libraries, we would propose an alternative, whereby we build tools for you to upload your information to share with the community over the internet, and in turn allow you to partake of the information provided by others.

You, the alumni, will be key to getting this information center launched. We will need your expertise, your contacts in the industry, and, of course, your maritime information. So please check in with us and read the updates, as we hope in the not-too-distant future to issue the call for data. In the mean time, we will be working on bringing you the library services which you as alumni have earned. For present inquiries about the library or for assistance finding information, please contact me through this web site

Stay tuned.