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NJ Knowledge Initiative Suspended

When you click on any of eight article databases, or ReferenceUSA, from the Camden County College Libraries website, you now see a screen that says statewide contracts for certain databases have ended due to lack of funding for the New Jersey Knowledge Initiative (NJKI). Fortunately, the CCC library budget will cover Business Source Premier (BSP) and CINAHL for the next 4 months, through June 30, for our community.

On July 1, the State Library hopes to have new statewide contracts in place for the new budget year. We will encourage the NJKI Advisory Committee to include BSP and CINAHL in its negotiations of these contracts. As BSP is one of the more heavily used of our suite of databases, we will make every effort to continue it. However, if its $10,000+ price tag has to come from college funds, it will strain the library budget and jeopardize our continuation of other resources.

If these two, and the other eight resources that have disappeared are important to your work or study, the NJ State Library asks that you contact the Governor's office to tell him what it means to you -

by mail: PO Box 0001, Trenton NJ 08625

by phone: 609-292-6000

by email: from http://www.state.nj.us/governor/govmail/html, select "Commerce" as your topic, then "Small Business" as your subtopic.

Your local legislators should also know ohat NJKI's resources are valuable to you. Find their contact information at http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/legsearch.asp

Be positive as you urge the Governor and local legislators to resume their support for this statewide shared service that had 15 million uses over the two years of its existence, while saving $68.5 million over retail prices to each institution separately.

The eight products that have been suspended for CCC users are:

Biomedical Reference Collection

MEDLINE

Nature Journals Online

Nursing and Allied Health Collection

Pre-CINAHL

ReferenceUSA

Regional Business News

Wiley InterScience Journals

Your Journals @ OVID

NJ Knowledge Initiative to end February 29, 2008: campaign to restore funding needs your help

One-third of the research databases listed on Libraries @ Camden County College website will go dark on March 1, 2008, if NJKI funding is not restored.

  Since the late June announcement of the $1 million shortfall that would cause all NJKI-funded resources to be discontinued as of February 28, 2008, State Librarian Norma Blake and her staff with other library supporters in Trenton have been seeking ways to continue this program. Now they need our help. They ask us to contact our legislators and to call the Governor’s office (609-292-6000) or email http://www.state.nj.us/governor/govmail.html (choose topic: Commerce) to tell them what this program means for students, faculty and administrators at Camden County College, and to businesses in the County.

   On our website we’ve identified the resources to which access by College library users is funded by NJKI (go to http://library.camdencc.edu/ and click on DATABASES BY TITLE). The following resources are at risk; college librarians consider those with asterisks vital for our community:

               For Science and Health:

                             Biomedical Reference

                             CINAHL and Pre-CINAHL*

                             MEDLINE*

                             Nature Research and Review Journals*

                             Nursing and Allied Health Literature*

                             OVID/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins

                             Wiley InterScience

               For Business and General Research:

                             Business Source Premier*

                             ReferenceUSA*

Regional Business News

                             (Academic Search Premier* is part of NJKI, but its contract expires 6/30/08.)

  Ironically, NJKI has just won the prestigious Innovation Award from the Council of State Governments (CSG) that is given to only 8 projects in the country each year. Other states want to replicate it for their academic and business communities!

  While the State Library is obtaining pricing for members of VALE (our academic library consortium) to cover the March-June shortfall – with high hopes for full funding in FY09 – this will not help Libraries @ Camden County College, as our budget for online resources is already fully committed for this year. Neither will it help the 300 small businesses that joined NJKI or the members of the public that use some of these resources through JerseyClicks using a NJ public library card.

  Since NJKI began in FY06, more than 10 million articles/records have been used by NJ researchers and entrepreneurs; colleges and university students and faculty; legislative staff and state agencies; and the more than 2500 member libraries of the NJ Library Network and the people they serve. For more information, see, “NJKI is Vital to the Needs and Goals of Higher Education”, posted at http://www.njstatelib.org/LDB/NJKI/2007_Advocacy/NJKI%20Academic%20Library%20Survey%20Points%20-%20Jan%2007.doc