Firstly I would like to thank everyone who took the trouble to reply to me,
all responses were gratefully received and taken on board.
I think the comments posted to the group have raised all the issues and
concerns about electronic journals in general, ones that, and I can only
speak for myself, have given me headaches. The main issue for me is
maintaining a core collection of reference material which is pertinent to
the Company business, is easily accessible and caters for browsers. I also
have to contend with ongoing issues of archival and storage space, making
best use of the journals budget, and also ensuring our user group is
equipped with the knowledge they need to make business critical decisions.
I, personally, am still wary of moving completely over to electronic
journals, some of the reasons for this are cost and accessibility and in
some cases the uncertainty of actually maintaining access to an electronic
archive we have paid for if, say, we decide to cancel a subscription. At
this moment, I will continue to subscribe to a print collection, although I
do take advantage of free electronic access which is supplied with some of
our print subscriptions.
In the case of the BMJ I have had a good think about my reasons for and
against for cancelling my subscription. As information professionals the
needs and ways of our user group dictates our decisions to the greater
extent, in this case I shall be cancelling our subscription to BMJ and
instead make available, copyright permitting, the table of contents. My
reasons for this are while we need the likes of BMJ and Lancet for awareness
of medical news in general, it is not the first journal my users fight over,
and as I am always looking for best use of departmental budgets to enrich
the resource collection, I feel that in our case, the BMJ subscription cost
can be put to another use, and by saying this I do not mean any disrespect
to the BMA.
Kind regards
Gill
Gill Wareing
Information Officer
SHS International Ltd
100 Wavertree Boulevard
Liverpool
L7 9PT
United Kingdom
tel: +44 (0)151 228 8161
fax: +44(0)151 228 2650
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
web: http://www.shsweb.co.uk
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