Took a call last night at 5ish from a Daily Tar Heel reporter, Greg Steen, about the state budget cuts and how they might affect the Academic Libraries. I did say things about digital access and how with digitization the wealth held in the Libraries are easily accessible to all the citizens of the state especially K-12 students and teachers and of course citizen researchers.
Here’s the article and here’s what I ended up having said (I actually said all this too):

Paul Jones, clinical professor in the School of Information and Library Science and in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, expressed concern that a lack of resources will affect others besides students and professors.

“One of the strengths of our library has been the outreach to public schools and citizen researchers,” Jones said.

“When you buy those books, you’re investing in knowledge that ripples through the state, not just knowledge in one guy’s mind.”

Jones said he believes that having to search for resources will distract professors from completing their duties.

“How do you want professors spending their time: trying to finagle ways of getting books or actually reading those books and developing ways of teaching in the classroom?”