Lesley,
I've not had a (public) whinge for ages, but this struck a chord.
I'd strongly endorse what you say, in particular the time taken to identify
and deal with these glitches.
On a personal level, it is frustrating when one is caught in the middle as a
service provider acting between the libraries and their journal suppliers.
For example, we (MIMAS) are supporting the 61 sites who've opted for
full-text linking alongside the ISI Web of Science service. You can imagine
that when links fail or aren't present, institutions users/libraries/info
services think there is something wrong with the WoS service itself, report
this and we then have to investigate, often also contacting ISI in the UK &
US and then responding back...(repeat as necessary).
To turn this positive, I would therefore be interested to hear about
publishers, agents and service providers who have implemented automated
access-checking mechanisms as part of their QC procedures. Also can I ask if
maybe their is a disincentive to put these in place publically, as then
subscribers would be able to quantify lack of supply and consequently may
ask for compensation?
Cheers,
Ross
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Ross MacIntyre tel:+44(0)161-275-7181
Senior Project Manager fax:+44(0)161-275-6040
Manchester Computing mobile:0778-095-6424
University of Manchester email:[log in to unmask]
Oxford Road http://www.mcc.ac.uk/
Manchester M13 9PL U.K.
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Lesley Crawshaw
> Sent: 15 February 2002 09:46
> To: [log in to unmask]
[snip]
> This kind of problem is becoming more and more unacceptable and time
> consuming. It makes one question just what it is we are paying for when we
> take out subscriptions. What about our users who suddenly don't
> have access
> to things that we informed them we do have access to? There must be a way
> that publishers can annually verify to us those journals we have
> electronic
> access to.
[snip]
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