Subject: Re: Access from publisher?
GullifB@utrc.utc.com
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 11:01:20 -0400
From: GullifB@utrc.utc.com Message-Id: <D241ECCF8B34D21185C700805FA72468015E7FF5@EXPRESS7> To: arl-ejournal@arl.org Subject: Re: Access from publisher? Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 11:01:20 -0400
On Wed, 01 Sep 1999, Fytton Rowland <j.f.rowland@lboro.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> User studies on electronic journals show that users often do not know
> which publisher publishes any given journal, and users certainly do not
> want to remember lots of different passwords for different publishers.
> The best solution, from the user's point of view, is to provide access
> to all the e-journals to which the library subscribes through a single
> common interface, which the library's users can become familiar with.
My sentiments exactly, and I know I am not alone. I have examined
and rejected several publishers' products which are comprehensive
gateways to the wonderful world of e-journals -- only the e-journals
that particular publisher offers, of course. We try to insist on
publishers' providing us with a "plain URL" interface allowing
integration into whatever arrangement we put up for our users on
our intranet. We do use a couple of aggregators because we don't
have any easy alternative: ProQuest and Ei Village, to name two.
ProQuest SiteBuilder is very interesting to us but we haven't had
time to explore it yet.
What we have right now is a page I home brewed a couple of years ago,
just to see what it would look like. I gathered a couple of dozen
"free" links (all that was available then) and hastily vi'd a quick
page on the server one slow morning. The project kept growing and
now I am hoping to convert it to a database with Web interface. You
can see what it looks like (as of last year, when I presented to
Internet Librarian '98 [U.S.]) at
http://www.infotoday.com/il98/gulliford/il6.htm
> This interface might well be that of an aggregator -- another reason
> why it is very desirable that all publishers need to be willing to
> sell through all of the aggregators. After all, in the print era,
> you didn't mind selling through any subscription agent, did you?
This is much more attractive than creating one's own common interface.
:-{)} As we know, there are a couple of avenues open in that direction.
ProQuest SiteBuilder, http://www.umi.com/hp/Features/SiteBuilder/ , is
one we at United Technologies are familiar with. Ebsco's new Corporate
ResourceNet, http://www.corpresource.com/about.htm , is another (they
offered to work with us on customization and adding specific titles we
need.) Our subscription agent is Ebsco and I would love to hand over
all the work to them. They should be the ones reporting to me when a
publisher makes an electronic version available of a print journal we
subscribe to. They are moving in that direction. I would also like
to give them my list of firewall IP addresses and have them negotiate
the licenses, but they are less eager to do that (right now, anyway).
I would far rather be using my intellectual resources for selection
than for remembering if I'm in insert mode on the text editor. :-{)}
Brad Gulliford
Project Manager, I-Net Team
United Technologies Information Network
East Hartford, Connecticut USA
860 610-7902
<gullifb@utrc.utc.com>
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