Zuzanna Wiorogórska, Open Access: How to Benefit from It Reasonably and How to Make the Own Contribution in Its Development?

Abstract: Open Access, repository, electronic resources Nowadays it is a standard that academic libraries subscribe to several paid e-resources – to provide a high level of education and to give equal opportunity in access to knowledge. In other words - that is the next aspect of globalization with all its consequences: if an university does not have enough funds, the users are on the lost position. However, do only expensive databases have exclusivity to be the best quality e-resources? Who decides about it? The proposed paper aims at presenting how to integrate OA resources into the library’s holdings and how to select the most valuable ones. Subject librarians as “the sieves of information” - responsible not only for choosing the pertinent resources, but also for gaining the balance between ‘free’ and ‘paid’. Another goal is to show how universities can contribute to the development of OA treasury. The vogue is currently to build digital repositories. However, copyright significantly limit the creators – if anything changes in this domain, the repositories will be nothing but collections of national heritage produced with worthy intentions but not too useful in everyday life of libraries’ users who need the most the contemporary manuals written by their lecturers and the access to academic dissertations. How to persuade academic teachers to publish in OA and how to organize effectively the electronic OA e-collection of thesis? These are the next tasks set before the librarians.