Senior dedicates time to retrieving articles from IU

Senior Maxwell Roberts plans on graduating in December 2007. From now until then, he plans on dedicating his time to downloading as many economic articles as possible that are available to him through the University. \n“Professors have all these scholarly journals on their shelves,” Roberts said. “I’ll have them, but on a USB drive instead of a shelf.” \nRoberts is majoring in economics and plans to download articles that pertain to his major. \nHe said that the articles he is taking are the only thing he can legally take from IU because he feels that IU doesn’t have anything else to offer him. \n“I have about seven authors’ worth of articles,” Roberts said. “I plan on having 20 to 25.” \nThe articles are available through a Web site named JSTOR, an online archive of scholarly journals that are available to print or download. \nAfter a student graduates from the University, they still have access to their computing accounts here on campus. \nAfter two consecutive terms in which they are not enrolled, their IU accounts are disabled, according to the UITS Web site. \nMoira Smith, a librarian at the Herman B Wells library, said that while JSTOR is free to IU students, staff and faculty, it is not free to IU, as the University pays a fee. \nSmith said that technically JSTOR can be accessed by anyone who purchases a guest account with the library. \nOnce the guest account is bought, they have full access to any of the library’s resources, she said. \nSmith also added that the JSTOR vendors have the University sign a license agreement to guarantee authorized IU users to access it. \nArlington Williams, an economics professor, explained that libraries are going through tremendous online revolutions. \nWilliams also explained that if you’re going into the business world and journal access is important, then the employer should provide access to those journals but most jobs in the business world would likely not require access to academic journals. \n“It’s a bit of a mystery why an undergraduate would want all of those journals without knowing a specific objective,” Williams said in regards to Roberts’ plans. \nRoberts said that he might need the articles in the future and it’s just nice to have the articles in a more convenient form. \n“I’ll use about one percent of them,” Roberts said. “If you’re a senior and you’re leaving there’s no reason not to do it. It’s 20 minutes of work but 100 hours of materials.”