Bill Wolff’s Composing Spaces

This Friday, Feb. 29, 2008, the New Jersey Knowledge Initiative (NJKI) is going to have its $1 million FY2008 funding is going to be cut from the state budget. As a result, students, faculty, and staff at colleges and businesses that are associated with NJKI, which includes my institution, will no longer have access to the following online journal databases:

• Academic Search Premier
• school & public library access only
• Business Source Premier
• Business Source Corporate
• CINAHL
• MEDLINE
• Biomedical Reference Collection Comprehensive
• Nursing & Allied Health Comprehensive.

This is, of course, an abomination. The result is essentially the cessation of knowledge acquisition and will drastically transform curricula, teaching, and learning throughout NJ colleges and universities.

To help keep this resource for New Jersey, please call Governor Corzine’s office at (609)292-6000, as well as Senator Richard Codey (609-292-5215) and Assemblyman Joseph Roberts (609-984-8290) and ask that they support any legislative action that restores the full $1 million to the Knowledge Initiative in FY2008.

Update: You can also contact online at http://www.state.nj.us/governor/govmail.html, then select “Commerce” as your topic, then “Small Business” as your sub-topic.

In protest, I would also encourage other libraries in NJ (and throughout the world) that are not going to have their access cut to open access to those at colleges and universities who are having it cut. The education of our students should not be truncated by short-term political goals to fund tax breaks for home owners. Please forward this as far as you can.