I'd like to propose yet another business model for the ACM Digital Library that blends both sides of the open vs. closed access debate, per Moshe Y. Vardi (July 2009). I agree that high-quality science publishing bears unavoidable costs even for electronic-only journals readers should pay for. But scientific papers should be shared free of charge with the largest audience possible. As a teacher, I must often explain basic algorithms and data structures by citing original pioneering papers. Because these "old" papers are still under copyright, students cannot freely and securely access them in digital libraries. They get only a limited view of their full technical coverage, getting the main aspects of highly cited papers while missing the full scope of the techniques being covered.

ACM should consider making available (for free) a set of highly rated CS papers from the Digital Library. This would offer students the historical papers that forged the science in the first place, letting them in turn explore the functionalities of the Digital Library and inspiring their future interest in being subscribers. One way to do so might be to offer a free Education Library as a subset of the Digital Library.