Hi Meiko and others,

Re: Springer LINK Alert - if that is what you are referring to I would
agree that it is pretty useless, just tells you more titles are
available, but as Meiko has already said not which ones!! I know us
librarians have got a reputation for being pretty good detectives, but
that is going to far!

I do have an exert from one to back up Meiko's comments as to its
unhelpfulness:

"Subject: More Titles accessible now in LINK

Your application for access to titles in LINK has been processed;
The print subscription has been confirmed and access set up.

Check the entire list of accessible titles at

        http://link.springer.de/cs/subli.htm

Any titles missing?"

As a more helpful alternative I would recommend the Springer LINK
Serials Update which tells you which titles are new, which have ceased,
which are no longer published by Springer etc..

You can register for this at:
http://link.springer.de/jour_update/index.htm

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]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mieko Yamaguchi
Sent: 29 January 2003 14:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Kluwer and Customer Service or Lack of It!


To add to Lesley's comment about lack of communication from Kluwer, some
time last year Kluwer added new servers on their system and although
journals' home and content pages are still on the original server at

   www.kluweronline.com

abstracts and PDF files appear to have moved to different servers

   ipsapp00x.lwwonline.com (where x is a numeral e.g. 7, 8, 9 etc.)

The change did not affect our on-campus users but we use a proxy server
which requires domain names of hosts to be on the permissions list.  The
first time we discovered about additional servers was (you guessed it!)
when an off-site user called to report that he could no longer access
full text of Kluwer journals.

Compare this with another vendor (CSA) which informed users in their
email newsletter when they added mirror servers in the US so sites with
proxy servers could update their permissions list in advance.

Like Lesley we (and our users) also find Kluwer's journal homepages less
than helpful.  The homepage of each journal includes a cover image and
it is immediately clear which journal a user is looking at.
Unfortunately the only other information on this page is subscription
information.  The journal contents page on the other hand simply has the
title at the top and a list of available issues (linked to contents
lists) below.  We decided to link from our OPAC to the journal's
homepage in the hope that users would see and click the journal contents
link but ideally we would like to see both the cover image and a list of
available volumes/years on the same page.

While we are on the topic of communication how do other sites find
messages from Springer Verlag telling you that some (unspecified) new
titles are now accessible in LINK?  How are we supposed to know which
titles?  I've been meaning to contact Springer to remind them it would
be helpful if they could tell us which titles are new but since I seem
to delete these messages on receipt I don't have any example to quote
(and they may not know which message I'm referring to!)

Enough gripe for now...

On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Lesley Crawshaw wrote:

> Quite by accident (isn't that always the way?), when trying to get
> ready for the transfer of Kluwer Law International titles from
> KluwerOnline to the new publisher's site (but that's another story), I

> noticed that many Kluwer journals where the backfiles had previously
> only gone back a few years to e.g. 1999 or 2000, seemed to have had
> additional content added, in many cases back to 1997 or 1998. It is
> clear from looking at the contents pages that this retrospective
> addition of backfiles is currently in process because in many cases
> there are only bits and pieces of volumes there.
>
> Now, whilst I welcome the addition of more online content, I would
> have preferred that I had received some communication from the
> publisher to this effect, at least to make us aware that this was
> happening. However, my experience over the past few years is that
> Kluwer has been and is still seriously lacking in the area of
> communication of changes etc. to its customers. To date I have
> received no information from Kluwer about this addition of backfiles.
> What makes it more difficult is that there is no easy way to be sure
> that just because the backfiles have been added that we have rights to

> access the full text, unlike ScienceDirect or Synergy there is nothing

> to indicate to users which titles they have access to and which they
> don't. This means that the only way to be sure that we do have access
> is to open a full text file for the earliest issues of each of these
> journals, thereby adding to our ejournal statistics!! So far I have
> had to make over 50 changes to holdings because of this, and I am
> still not even halfway through this task.
[snip]
> Anybody else out there got anything they would like to add, or am I
> being unfair to Kluwer?

Mieko
-----
Mieko Yamaguchi                                [log in to unmask]
Technical Services Manager/System Coordinator        +44 (0)1248 382970
Main Library, University of Wales Bangor, UK   +44 (0)1248 382979 (Fax)