The future of the Tennessee Electronic Library system is in the hands of the Tennessee legislature. Many librarians and over 250 library users recently lobbied for state funding at the Library Legislative Day 2001.
TEL is a project spearheaded by the Tennessee Library Association and TENN-SHARE, an organization whose purpose is to push for cooperation among member libraries and provide all citizens of Tennessee free access to a variety of electronic databases, TENN-SHARE president Cathy Evans said.
TEL consists of 15 databases about humanities, education, business, science, current events, art, politics, economics, social sciences, law, health, computers, environmental issues and general interest topics.
Lobbyists are pushing for $1 million in funding. With the funding, the state can keep TEL and add more information, Evans said.
University of Memphis communication doctoral student Cindy Burleson is a lobbyist who said TEL needs to be completely funded by the state.
"We want the state to pay for TEL or we could possibly lose it," Burleson said.
"TEL is a great database -- 1,400 K-12 public schools, 102 academic libraries and 265 public libraries in the state use TEL," Evans said.
If TEL funding were to cease, Evans said the combined costs of all TEL databases would cost about $39 million.
Annelle Huggins, associate dean of libraries, said some of the TEL databases are the most heavily used databases at U of M libraries.
"If TEL loses funding, then The U of M would have to find funding to acquire at least one of the databases in TEL," Huggins said.
"The state is supportive of TEL and they like the concept of free information to all people," Evans said. "But, the state has limited funds with many priorities. It is hard to tell what will happen to TEL."
Diane McKinna, volunteer coordinator for Friends of the Memphis/Shelby County Public Library, said TEL is very easy to use to find accurate information.
"When you use TEL you don't have to weed through the irrelevant information," McKinna said.
According to District 93 Rep. Mike Kernell, if the state funds TEL, the cost is only 20 cents per person.
"TEL sounds good," Kernell said. "It is my understanding that if the state does not fund TEL then the average citizen will not be able to access free information."
The state wants to see how much information on TEL can already be obtained freely on the Internet before the legislature approves TEL or not, Kernell said.
Joann Keyton, communication professor, said TEL is invaluable to her work and she uses the electronic library in all her graduate and undergraduate classes.
"We, as a university, cannot do without TEL," Keyton said. "Without the electronic library all the students and researchers are at a disadvantage. We will be severely handicapped without TEL."
Many professors and librarians are urging all students to access TEL through the University library or the Memphis/Shelby County Public Library and contact their state representative in support of TEL funding.
