The Publishing Research Consortium has published a paper about the problems
faced by UK SMEs in obtaining scientific and technical articles. Companies can
generally obtain such articles through pay-per-view services or BL document
delivery, but the cost of obtaining everything they would like is a barrier.
http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/SMEAccessResearchReport.pdf
(and see my blog http://sintoblog.blogspot.com/)
Public libraries are unlikely to stock these journals, university libraries can
usually provide only walk-in access (if that) and have problems with copyright
clearance. SMEs are an important part of the national, regional and local
economy, yet they have to rely on their own resources to fund research
information.
What are your pricing policies on providing BL document delivery to local
companies? Are there any public libraries that provide this at less than cost? I
will summarise results to this list.
Carl Clayton
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