From: Daniel Michniewicz <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2012 10:00:01 -0500

What you're missing here, Richard:

1) The full-text of HBR content is available through EBSCO's Business
Source Premier (BSP) database. Harvard and EBSCO would have come to
some arrangement to make this happen.

2) My library, and many other libraries at academic institutions, pay
thousands of dollars every year for access to that EBSCO database.
Academic libraries are probably EBSCO's biggest BSP subscribers, and
faculty and students are the main end-users.

3) Academic institutions use course management software like
Blackboard in which faculty have course pages where they can provide
links to database and other content. Faculty member wants students to
read an article, they put a link to it in their course page. They're
not making copies. They're just providing a link, pointing students to
that article.

4) If Harvard does not want the full-text of HBR made available to
faculty and students -- knowing full well academic institutions
subscribe to and use databases in this manner -- but would rather we
pay Harvard directly, they should say TO EBSCO (not the end-users!),
hey EBSCO, take down the full-text of articles and just provide
citations.

It's neither wrong nor greedy for them to want to get paid. It's about
publishers learning who the end-users of published content are and
how, in the Internet age, content gets accessed. It's just a frickin'
link, for crying out loud.

Dan Michniewicz
Digital Resources Librarian
Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology
[log in to unmask]