Hi John,

I have been away on holiday and just came back to emails.  Has anyone
responded to your question?  I would be very interested in what was said, as
I brought it up in a meeting a few months back with fellow Librarians who
had not thought about this problem.

I am a Librarian in a medical/clinical school and the faculty ONLY want
electronic format for their journals.  Therefore, we cannot share them with
the wider community as we used to.  We have always maintained an open
academic library, allowing NHS staff to come over and use our paper
journal/book/video collection but are now having to be restrictive because
of electronic licenses.  And, of course, we cannot share them via
interlibrary loans which goes against our wishes to share information
(by the way, has any publisher you know of justified why it is okay to
photocopy a paper journal and send it out interlibrary loan, but not okay to
print off an article in a subscribed to e-journal and send it?).

I do prefer the electronic format (and according to statistics, so does the
faculty, staff and students in the medical school) as it saves on space and
wear-and-tear, plus our folks are spread all over Wales and it makes it easy
for them to continue research no matter where they are.  However, I think
the issue you brought up is a very important one that needs to be addressed
very quickly.  I would like to know if anyone had ideas.

Many thanks,

Lori Havard
Swansea University



-----Original Message-----
From: UK medical/ health care library community / information workers
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 15/04/2005 10:50
Subject: A query - online articles

Dear all,

I would be interested to hear whether other libraries have had this
problem.

When a journal article is only published online and is only accessible
with a subscription, how do other libraries who do not subscribe to the
journal get access to it?

For instance, I was asked about Biomedical Central articles from a
library which does not subscribe to them.   Does the BL have a policy on
this as this is probably going to develop as an issue when more journals
go online without a print copy?

All help gratefully received and summarised to the list.

Cheers

John

John Blenkinsopp
Lead Librarian and Clinical Effectiveness Advisor
University Hospital of North Tees
Stockton on Tees
TS19 8PE
01642 624789