Already, Southeastern Louisiana University intends to terminate both its French and French education undergraduate programs, a decision both inappropriate and unfortunate when one considers the cultural history of our state.
Northwestern State intends to eliminate a number of essential undergraduate programs, such as chemistry, physics, political science, sociology and others.
LSU plans to eliminate funding for a number of research projects and the graduate program in library and information science. Furthermore, LSU’s School of Library and Information Science offers the only training for librarians in the entire state.
Should the school be closed, aspiring Louisiana librarians will be forced to find education and homes elsewhere, contributing to other states’ economies. Eventually, libraries in Louisiana might hire fewer qualified professionals to assist patrons in navigating information systems, but incidentally, large numbers of these information systems probably will be unavailable regardless.
The LOUIS consortium, which includes Louisiana’s public and private universities and colleges as well as other information institutions, combines resources to enable these institutions to provide users with access to scholarly databases that are essential to active research.
Especially in an information environment in which many periodicals are either too costly or published solely online, these databases are our only access points for articles in countless research journals.
If we wish to encourage pursuit of education, students, professors and other people all deserve access to these databases. The loss of well-trained librarians in our state will adversely affect those seeking information in a number of different settings, though only indirectly for researchers who happen to be as adept at navigating resources as librarians themselves.
However, the deficit of scholarly databases will have a direct and negative impact on every individual conducting scholarly research in Louisiana.
The Board of Regents has promised funding for no longer than the next two months, and this is unacceptable.
I anticipate both a substantial migration of people who do not wish to raise children in a state where education is unobtainable and an unwillingness of other people to pursue an education beyond high school if attaining a respectable one is impossible and unaffordable in Louisiana.
Our state has suffered from unprecedented levels of poverty and illiteracy for quite some time, and in the past decade has endured many hardships such as those precipitated by Hurricane Katrina and BP’s oil leak.
Increasingly, there is an urgency for our people to be well-educated so that our state can be properly equipped to improve its condition.
However, if LOUIS becomes a thing of the past, that goal will be unrealistic.
Hillary Warren
Librarian
Baton Rouge, LA
No comments:
Post a Comment