The Feb. 14 article on the North Dakota State University library is an excellent example of why The Forum has received so many complaints about the quality of its reportage on various issues.
The reporter, Amy Dalrymple, wrote that student use of the NDSU library is down and its director, Mark England, thinks that's because the library is inadequate. Neither England nor Dalrymple comment on the use of non traditional resources, e.g., the Internet, in educating today's college students or alternatives to buying expensive (paper) journals.
Do NDSU faculty photocopy or post materials on a class Web site? Why are the overall library budgets of the University of North Dakota, Minnesota State University Moorhead and Concordia the same or less than NDSU's but their book budgets are much higher? Why were no students, other than the student president, or faculty interviewed for this article for their opinions about a potential doubling of the student library fees to finance a new building?
It appears that the sole purpose of this article is to generate public support for a new, expensive library building that will be built with mostly tax dollars and some private and student funds. By the way, what are the "internal dollars" mentioned in the article? Does NDSU have a printing press in a building basement printing currency?
