2.1. Policy Changes and Challenges

A review of the literature identifies analyses of academic library access policies and unaffiliated access to libraries using online and telephone surveys. Several articles examine the effects of policy changes and restrictions on library and institutional mission statements or intentions. The level of unaffiliated access to academic libraries varies globally. In Australia, the concept of national library resource sharing within which academic libraries participated was encouraged in the 1980s. In a review of external access to the University of Western Australia Library, Melanie Harris (1989, p. 219) noted that “[o]peness to external use is one way in which university libraries fulfill their role as part of the national library resource.”

Many studies are located in the United States, with a long and varied history of academic library community engagement (Dunne, 2009). Publication requirements for tenured professional academic librarians in the United States may also account for the larger contribution. There is a predominance of English language and locations in the north Atlantic in the literature. Studies in the 1990s and 2000s reflect changes in practices and issues around public access to academic and research libraries (primarily Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States) resulting from budget restraints and electronic subscription licensing (Barsun, 2003; Burclaff & Britz, 2011; Creaser, 2011; Shires, 2006; Weare & Stephenson, 2012; Whitehead, Gutierrez, & Miller, 2014). The studies discuss variations in external access policies and conditions, and the presence of differing fee structures. During the 1960s, increases in population, higher education institutions and secondary school curriculum changes in the United States, and the growth in publications led to greater demand for access, borrowing privileges and study space. The provision of such services to unaffiliated, external users such as high school students, members of the public, local businesses and industries became difficult for academic libraries to sustain. They began to prioritise servicing their primary users: students and faculty (Courtney, 2001). Courtney correctly predicted “the possibility of diminished access” for external users, rather than expansion, as a result of the growth in electronic resources (2001, p. 478). Many academic libraries have implemented “tiered access policies” (Burclaff & Britz, 2011, p. 3), charging fees to external users. Within the multi-levelled and multi-dimensional access incorporating agreements, coalitions and consortia with other research institutions and organisations, the individual or unaffiliated researcher appears to have the least, or most restricted, access. At the same time, public desires for access are reflected in the tiered policies, indicating a growing need for wide access to research knowledge contained in university libraries.

Library access policies and practices in Europe vary. In some countries, the tradition in academic libraries has not always facilitated unaffiliated access to collections. Closed stacks with material organised by accession number and size restricted open or free access to shelf browsing. However, some now have implemented shelf organisation by classification schemes. For example, in 1989, as Eastern Europe underwent economic and political changes, the University of Warsaw in Poland opened a new library and implemented more open and accessible practices (Dzurak, 2008). In Finland, university libraries are open to all (Lehto, Toivonen, & Iivonen, 2012). Academic libraries in Norway traditionally are open and accessible to all (Anderson & Fagerlid, 2016). In Sweden they are “in principle…open to the public, and not exclusive to the members of the academic community” (Thomas, 2010, p. 112). In Italy, a focus on the “so-called ‘open library’” incorporates social inclusion and the role of academic libraries in the national infrastructure (Simane, 2017).

Is access to academic libraries for the unaffiliated considered to be a public right? If an institution receives public funding that contributes to the material and digital collections found within academic libraries, does the public have a right to access such knowledge? A similar argument forms the basis of OA mandates, with governments, funding bodies and institutions wishing to maximise the return to taxpayers on their investment in funding research and counter the rising costs of subscriptions to commercial online research journals (Vincent-Lamarre, Boivin, Gargouri, Larivière, & Harnad, 2016). This is a challenge to the predominant control of access to knowledge by commercial publishers.

In North America, university mission statements and policies from the nineteenth century reflected a history of provision of access to libraries. Amy Kaufman (2011) reviews and documents challenges to academic library access in the United States and Canada, including several legal contests of restrictions. One major challenge overturned the 1972 policy for the new University of Toronto Library that excluded undergraduate students and members of the public. However, based on her review of legal cases, Kaufman concludes that access to publicly funded institutions is not necessarily a public right. Instead, it depends on individual characteristics — “the university’s mission, their patrons’ needs, their financial circumstances, and the place they see for their academic library in the larger community” (p. 393).