Knowledge Hoarding, or Academic Miserliness

This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately and probably deserves to be addressed in a proper essay rather than a quickly composed  blog post, but here goes.

Online libraries restricted to public access

I am currently an adjunct teaching at a tiny, private school [read: part-time, underpaid & few resources]. This semester I am teaching an advanced undergraduate level course. They are awesome students and I am constantly amazed at their dedication. One of the things I am trying to emphasize is the importance of reliable, peer-reviewed sources. When I was still in grad school and had access to my huge university’s online databases I did not notice this problem so much, but this semester has been exceeding frustrating for both myself and my students. Trying to find relevant, reliable and peer-reviewed sources that are ACCESSIBLE feels nigh impossible most days. My school’s databases are limited and hard to navigate, therefore I often use Google Scholar to find citations. This week, it took me at least three times as long as it should have to find a couple of relevant articles for my class* because every time I came across a citation online that looked perfect, it was only available on Jstor, to which I do not have access. Well, to be fair, Jstor has made a limited number of their articles available, but when I just searched through this limited selection, I could find nothing relevant.