Connie,

   We (San Francisco State University) do not offer online access to
alumni from off-campus.  Anyone is free to come into our library and
use the databases inside the library. That was already taken into
account when we planned for the online access in our library. Our
licenses are based on the number of users we have, and if we opened
the access to alumni, you can be sure the vendors would want more $
for increasing our potential user base.  And we are not even talking
about the restrictions of some vendors as to how far away a user can
be from the campus to access the database.  That is not a limitation
of hardware or software but of some vendors' imagination.

   My recommendation would be to direct the alumni to a public library
to give him/her access to their databases.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:39:02 -0500
From:    Connie Foster <connie.foster@WKU.EDU>
Subject: Alumni access question

Do any of you license databases to include alumni, particularly
internationally based alums?
connie foster

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