The State Senate has passed legislation (S.5419) sponsored by Senator William T. Stachowski (D-C, Lake View) that would create the Academic Research Information Access Act (ARIA) within the New York State Department of Economic Development. The plan is designed to foster economic growth by making high end information resources available to a wide array of technical businesses throughout the state.

“To help our weakened economy continue to recover, it is important to create an information infrastructure to support academic, business and entrepreneurial research and growth,” said Senator Stachowski. “This program will assist many industries by giving them broad statewide access to electronic resources. In turn, their success will fuel workforce development, economic expansion, new enterprises, new inventions, and new jobs.

The bill creates a program to allow public and private academic research libraries to make their collections accessible to the entrepreneurial community. Currently, access to these resources is limited because of the high cost of licensing agreements and restrictive contracts that inhibit collaboration.

According to the legislation, electronic resources such as academic, professional and industry journals, reference handbooks and manuals, research tracking tools, indexes and abstracts would be made available to those in the fields of science, technology and medical research and development, including researchers, scholars, faculty and students and member and associate institutions of the New York State Higher Education Initiative (NYSHEI); researchers; entrepreneurs; innovators working in business incubators aligned with NYSHEI ; recipients of grants from NYSTAR or Empire State Development; and small businesses in approved Empire Zones.