Dear graduating students,

Congratulations on finishing your degree! All of us here at LIB-BIZ-KIT Headquarters are very proud of you, and we wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

We have some good news for you: even as an alumna/alumnus, you will still have access to nearly all library resources, including the ability to check out circulating materials.

And we have some bad news: you will not be able to access our electronic resources from off campus. You’ll have to come to the library to do that. And you will no longer have access to EZ-Borrow or ILLiad.

We don’t do this because we are big meanies. And please don’t blame that tired old Drexel Shaft for these changes. It’s simply not the case.

In fact, if we could, we would love to continue to offer our electronic resources to you for the rest of your life. However we can’t.

When we sign contracts and licenses for our databases, we are contractually obligated to allow only current students, faculty, staff, and walk-in library users to use our databases. Because these are academic subscriptions, we get these resources at heavily discounted prices. Of course, the databases also come with the stipulations that they will only be used for academic purposes – academic scholarly research, writing term papers, and doing class projects.

And when we said heavily discounted, we mean Heavily Discounted. Academic subscriptions can be discounted anywhere from 50% off what businesses pay, to, in some cases, up to 95% discounts. Database vendors know the power of information, and they give us the markdowns with the hope that when you go off into the work world, you will explain to your new employers that you simply are unable to do your job without access to these fabulous resources. For example, those Mintel Reports you’re so fond of? They cost businesses between $5000 to $15000 for each report.

Some universities do offer a suite of electronic resources available to alumni from off-campus. And we hope that Drexel’s Alumni Office will do the same in the near future.

For more information about library services for alumni, please visit our handy guide to “Alumni Privileges” at http://www.library.drexel.edu/about/alumni.html.

Fondly,
Emily Missner
Business librarian
Drexel University Libraries

P.S. Of course, you can still continue to receive LIB-BIZ-LIT even after you’ve graduated. As always, it will be free of charge.

* Originally published on June 14, 2007. For business research tips & tricks in real-time, subscribe to LIB-BIZ-KIT.