I would agree with this too.
With the best will in the world, there is no way we can check all of our
electronic holdings: there just are not enough hours in the day, and we
do tend to be a more reactive than proactive. Unfortunately, there are
minor errors here and there and when we spot them, or they get pointed
out to us, we get them sorted as soon as we can. It may not sound like
the best service but what I am finding, however, is that it isn't
necessarily our students who worry about the accuracy of holding
information, but colleagues in the library.
I think part of the issue is that it's relatively straightforward to see
what's involved with getting a print journal into circulation, but there
do seem to be many more factors involved with e-copies: authentication,
link resolver capability, concurrent users etc. Also, depending on what
sort of agreement you have with a publisher, you may find that once you
stop paying for a title/package or a title is removed from a package,
you'll lose access to anything you have previously had access to. It can
then be hard to try to communicate to all parties - library colleagues,
students, academic staff - what has happened.
Sarah
Sarah Taylor
Electronic Resources Librarian
Library
University of Bolton
Deane Road
Bolton
BL3 5AB
01204 903099
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by UKSG - Connecting the Information
Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mike
Poulin
Sent: 09 March 2010 16:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [LIS-E-RESOURCES] E-journals Management
I agree.
We periodically will go through holdings of some publishers who have had
problems in the past and if they have visual holdings indicators - check
those - but actually testing - in many cases requires either testing or
going into an admin module to see how the rights are set. Bringing up
test
copies inflates use stats and for some of these - the testing might be
the
only use. Use of the admin module does not lead to using student labor
to
do the work due to security concerns. (I really like visual indicators
of
activation and wish all publishers would include that on their sites).
Even if one does check each issue - you would never know if each actual
article within was accessible. But that is not much different than
check-in
- you would have looked to see if you got the correct issue but probably
did
not look within to see that all the articles were actually there. I
have no
idea where one would find the time to actually do this checking as I
think
one needs to trade the staff time for check-in with the added work for
activation and maintenance.
We have moved well over 50% of our subscriptions to online only. We use
a
criteria where we convert titles which have archival content stored in
secure archives - we use Portico but sometimes rely on Jstor.
The main driver for us in conversion to online is use - print = no use |
online = used (slight exaggeration) . We posted over 350,000 full text
views for the online titles we can garner Counter stats last year. For
the
same period - the entire use of all of our print volumes, current and
backfile, was about 6,000. Since our humanities and social sciences
journals have to be pulled from our in house storage system which is
very
convenient to use (more so than having to go to the shelves) - we have
accurate counts for those titles - they were 3,000 of the 6,000 uses of
print. We canceled 230 titles last year and the bulk of them were print
only. They were just not getting any use sometimes for 2 or 3 years
which
made them targets.
Publishers which don't keep the access running well actually are hurting
themselves as much as us. Those titles which are inactive do not get
used
and many patrons don't go to the trouble of contacting us. So those
titles
come up for review with few use stats - high costs per use. Even if we
did
not have access, we might likely determine - since no one complained -
it is
probably not needed and onto the next cancellation list it goes. I am
not
sure that all publishers see keeping the access rights accurate as a
matter
of survival but I would encourage them to do so.
Mike
---------------------------------------
Mike Poulin
Digital Resources Librarian & Coordinator of Digital Initiatives
Colgate University Libraries
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, NY 13346
315-228-7025
fax: 315-228-7934
[log in to unmask]
On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Mitchell Dunkley
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Trudi
>
> It is very difficult to monitor missing electronic issues, just as it
is
> keeping tabs on inactive/broken URLs. Library users, academic and
> library staff are the 'eyes' of the operation - whether searching an
> eJournals A-Z List or library catalogue. Most of the amendments made
by
> libraries tend to be reactive, rather than proactive...
>
> Mitchell Dunkley
> Kimberlin Library, De Montfort University
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: An informal open list set up by UKSG - Connecting the
Information
> Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Trudi
> Pledger
> Sent: 09 March 2010 15:06
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [LIS-E-RESOURCES] E-journals Management
>
> Hello,
>
> We are in the process of reviewing our serials section with the move
> towards e-only. With the print journals we currently subscribe to we
> have clear procedures on how to manage these - processing, check -in
> /receipt, claiming outstanding issues ... it is less clearcut with the
> e-journals to we subscribe and we are only aware of a problem when a
> student tells us they are unable to access a particular issue or
title.
> How do other institutions deal with e-journal management? Do you have
> ways of monitoring access? Do you have a way of "checking in" an
> e-journal or a "claims" procedure?
>
> Also, if you have gone (predominantly) e-only for journals what has
the
> response been from users?
>
> Thank you in advance, any thoughts /advice gratefully rec'd.
>
> Trudi
>
>
>
>
> Trudi Pledger
> Serials Librarian
> Kenrick Library, Birmingham City University, B42 2SU
> 0121 331 5287
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org/serials
> UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn
>
> lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org/serials
> UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn
>
lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org/serials
UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn
lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org/serials
UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn
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