The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of SIU at Carbondale. Except during vacations and exam weeks, The Daily Egyptian is published Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and TWThF during the summer semester."

Morris Library needs larger book budget

Recent editorials in the DAILY EGYPTIAN have correctly questioned the raising of tuition fees as well as reporting the disturbing drop in SIU enrollments.

While other universities experience increasing enrollments, SIU continues to face major problems involving a Chancellor who would be clearly better off running fundamentalist universities such as Baylor, Bob Jones, and Oral Roberts as well as the continuing failure of six-figure student enrollment administrators to attract more students to this campus.

However, another issue now leads many students (who, contrary to the opinions of certain faculty and administrators are NOT stupid) to think twice about SIUC's reputation as a research university offering value for money, namely the chaos and decline affecting the Morris Library since the appointment of Dean Carlson. Research is now becoming a nightmare due to the decrease in the book and monograph purchasing budget as well as the decision to remove several printed journals from the shelves and substitute abbreviated and useless internet versions in their place. This decision was made WITHOUT consulting affected faculty.

Here, I can only comment on how my discipline is affected. The online version of CINEMA JOURNAL is a truncated version of the printed original hard copy. Although it supplies articles (for those fortunate enough to escape the many viruses affecting Colleg of Liberal Arts and Morris Library computers!) it does not contain other essential information contained in the printed version such as archive acquisitions, film articles in non-film journals, calls for papers for conferences and book collections, membership listings, recent book publications (which will result in expensive inter-library loan orders for those wishing to keep up with research), and university press notices. The lack of this information severely hinders my own research, to say nothing of my personal effort in contributing towards the Chancellor's questionable goal of "Southern at 150" being a research university - unless this exclusively involves the small business incubator?

Unfortunately, like many SIUC faculty, I do not earn a six-figure salary like those in Anthony Hall frequently rewarded by former SIUC administrator Glenn Poshard, who now heads the Board of Trustees. So, due to low peer-group salary and compressed income, I cannot purchase these missing research journals out of my own pocket. But I feel that if this situation continues, many more students than the 200 seniors who decided to transfer to other universities this fall will begin to question SIUC's reputation as a research university offering value for money. If they leave - and SIUC administration will eagerly blame poorly paid, demoralized faculty for this possible outcome - the responsibility will really involve not this group but the higher administration of Anthony Hall and the Morris Library.

It is not too late to remedy this already disastrous situation by restoring the Library book budget to its previous pre-Carlson level and returning essential printed copies of research journals to the shelves.

Tony Williams Professor/Area Head of Film Studies. Department of English.

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