On 26 April the new turnstiles in Maastricht University's libraries were officially 'opened' and access to the library and its vast collections is now limited to UM staff and students. This policy is misguided and elitist for a variety of reasons:
- It has always been a noticeable trend for the library to only become excessively crowded throughout the last week of each period and exams' week, during which entrance to the library was already limited to UM students/staff.
The new policy is therefore NOT going to decrease pressure on the library's facilities and services.
- Maastricht University was founded in 1976, at a time Southern-Limburg was hit hard by the closing of the mines - resulting in a hardworking, but poorly educated provincial population. Realizing that the region needed thorough economic restructuring to keep up with the rest of the country, Parliament decided to grant Maastricht the honour of opening the country's eighth medical faculty, which would eventually grow into today's Maastricht University.
With this in mind, the access restriction of the University's libraries is in clear contrast with the historical background and founding principles of Maastricht University.
- In a society where the single biggest factor in determining social mobility is education, it seems unjust, unsympathetic and elitist to limit anyone's opportunities for autonomous development and education. An institutional collection, such as the University's, should also be available for use by those who, for a variety of reasons, cannot or choose not to enroll in higher education or purchase a vast and expensive collection of books and journal subscriptions.
As professor Sally Wyatt stated in her comment under our op-ed in the Observant: "It is embarrassing to work for a university that is so inconsistent in its stated commitment to open access. Researchers are increasingly exhorted to make their publications and data open to people around the world (often at great cost in terms of time and money), but the resources of the library (also paid for by public money) are no longer freely accessible to the people of Maastricht."
Let us urge the University to open up its libraries and its analogue collections open to all again!
