A “digital commons” is on the horizon for University of Wisconsin System students, offering them a wealth of information including more digital journals and databases than ever before.

The Board of Regents discussed the proposal last month, and it is now in the system’s 2010-11 budget request to the state.

The UW Digital Commons would be a costly addition, but with the whole UW System as the customer, the cost is negotiable. Estimates state the cost to be $6 million per year for a total of 170,000 students and 30,000 faculty members. The cost per user is priced at $30.

Many benefits will arise with the proposed digital commons, UW libraries director Ken Frazier said.

“At UW-Madison, we have some of the highest usage of online databases of any university,” Frazier said. “We know this from communication with publishers and database vendors.”

UW Digital Commons would offer access to commercial databases, such as Elsevier, Blackwell and Wiley.

Over the past few years, the fight to keep the libraries updated has been difficult, according to Frazier. Recent technological improvements to College Library were paid for by donations from the UW Parents Fund.

“We have been struggling to maintain the databases that students and faculty need,” Frazier said. “Madison is in better shape than the rest of the UW campuses, but without an increase in the funding for online databases we will lose access to ‘must have’ electronic journals and databases.”

History professor William Cronon said this would be a great new tool for faculty and students, who often use Google — and solely Google — to do research.

“If you can’t find it on Google, it doesn’t exist,” Cronon said, mocking the method of research used by most students.

Cronon, a supporter of the UW Digital Commons proposal, thinks implementation of this kind of gateway will help students look elsewhere for research, calling the idea “the democratization of research.”

The vast journals and databases would be available to any UW System student, anywhere, at any time, in fields ranging from history to engineering.

“Up until the 1980s, part of what a great research university was, was monopoly access to a great library,” Cronon said.