E.P.Goldfinch,
Responses below.
On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, E.P. Goldfinch wrote:
> My response is intended to be seen by all!
>
> I have read with interest the recent and past correspondence concerning
> access to e-journals. Much of the correspondence seems to indicate that
> access to e-journals is not so simple and popular with readers after all. I
> would be intrigued to know which publishers, small or large, actually find
> a net cost benefit from the ventures.
I suggest that if they don't provide e-access to their journals they won't
have a 'venture' in a few years. Journals that don't have readers will
quite soon not have writers.
I was very sceptical at the time of
> writing my articles that appeared in the recent issue of 'Learned
> Publishing' but I am even more convinced now that it is very unlikely that
> small publishers would gain by going on-line.
See above.
I was most intrigued by the
> figures provided by Stuart Rawson from Belfast, namely 3000 accesses per
> week for 3000 journals available. My simple arithmetic tells me that that
> is one access per journal per week, on average, and if any journal gets 10
> accesses 9 other get none (on average). Perhaps I misunderstood.
>
This is the nature of journal use. Any introductory book on library
science will tell you that a few items will be used often with a very long
tail of rarely used items. Surveys of use of hardcopy journal collections
often show that titles that may be considered essential by faculty are
only accessed a few times a year - and this may be to 10, 20 or 30 (or
more) years worth.
Examining raw statistics is a bit like examining entrails to predict the
future. You see one user per journal per week - I see 3000 articles
read which may not otherwise have been read.
Regards,
John Smith,
The Templeman Library,
University of Kent at Canterbury.
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