Whenever I hear a story like this, my knee-jerk reaction is to think
about technical solutions, since we do all sorts of development work
for e-journal linking. How difficult would it be to develop an
access checking spider? Or some sort of irrefutable access
credential? Or a an access verification or certification service? We
could do that pretty easily, but who would pay for it?
But I keep on coming back to the fact that assuring access is a
non-technical problem and has to be solved by non-technical means.
When ever a library purchases access to a service, the contract
should specify reimbursements for non-performance. The CLIR-DLF
model license, which we use, says:
If the Licensed Materials fail to operate in conformance with the
terms of this Agreement, Licensee shall immediately notify Licensor,
and Licensor shall promptly use reasonable efforts to restore access
to the Licensed Materials as soon as possible. In the event that
Licensor fails to repair the nonconformity in a reasonable time,
Licensor shall reimburse Licensee in an amount that the nonconformity
is proportional to the total Fees owed by Licensee under this
Agreement.
A library's checkbook can speak a lot louder than its librarians.
Eric
At 9:45 AM +0000 2/15/02, Lesley Crawshaw wrote:
>Hi,
>
>We have recently begun the process of checking that all the electronic
>journals we should have access to in 2002 are OK.
>
>We have recently done a check of our ingenta subscriptions to check that
>everything is OK for 2002. In general most things have renewed OK, but one
>problem which stands out is the problems we have with access to our Sage
>journals. I don't know if others of you are blighted with this problem.
>
>When Sage journals first went online on ingenta, we found we had access to
>very few of our subscribed titles and a great deal of effort went into get
>this sorted with endless emails between ourselves and Sage. It took 2 months
>of persistent hassling and checking to get all our access sorted. Having
>done this once we felt that any future problems would only be minor!!
>
>We should have access to 58 Sage journals and would have expected that if
>there were any problems that they should have related to the 2002 content
>only.
>
>Unfortuately this is not the case.
>
>For 8 of our Sage subscriptions we now have no access at all! For 5 of our
>subscriptions we don't have access to the 2002 issues. That's almost 25% of
>our Sage journals which have access problems, which as one of my colleagues
>who did the checking said "not very impressive - is it?"
>
>So, what has gone wrong?? - all of these subscriptions have been renewed
>with our agents, apart from a few titles which are not yet due for renewal.
>
>We are now going to have to spend some time trying to get our access to our
>subscribed content restored.
>
>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.
>
>Cheers
>Lesley
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Lesley Crawshaw, Faculty Information Consultant,
>Learning and Information Services,
>University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB UK
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>phone: 01707 284662 fax: 01707 284666
>web: http://www.herts.ac.uk/lis/subjects/natsci/ejournal/
>List owner:[log in to unmask]
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--
Eric Hellman, President Openly Informatics, Inc.
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tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216 Bloomfield, NJ 07003
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