Library logos for web resources

["Peter McDonald" <pmcdonal@library.syr.edu>]

As our focus on collections increasingly becomes one of licensing
agreements and electronic resources, and as a growing share of our
allocations are spent on same, is there any gathering momentum out there
to press e-resource vendors and publishers to provide us in turn (e.g.
individual licensee libraries) with "real estate" on their product
web-pages (at the title level) to display our individual library logos?

Consider that I had a work study student in my office yesterday who
thought some of our FirstSearch databases were "free"! Why?  Because there
was nothing on the databases to indicate that they were being brought to
his desktop BY THE LIBRARY and since he didn't have to pay for access it
was perfectly logical from a student's point of view to consider them part
of the vast "free"  Internet. Why would he think otherwise? When I told
him that these "freebies" cost upwards of tens of thousands of dollars his
eyes literally popped out.

The ALCTS-CMDS-ColDev & Electronic Media Committee is looking into writing
some sort of boilerplate on these "Electronic License Stamps" -- little
more than inline gifs really. The committee's hope is that eventually all
e-publishers will provide us with the ability to display our library logos
at the title level as part of every e- contract.

netLibrary is out in front on this and if you visit the UT Austin site,
"UT logo" appears on every "e-book" TP along with the netLibrary logo (at
least that was so last I saw) -- but who else is doing this?  Anyone?

But to spend millions on resources and then have so few of our users grasp
that they are "in" the library and we're paying for these very expensive
resources seems foolhardy.

To those who attended the Academic Press luncheon at midwinter, when I
brought the topic up there, AP couldn't have been more open and positive
about it. Ditto though to a lesser extent Chadwyck-Healey. J.  Curtis at
Springer seemed amenable as did Adam Chandler at Kluwer. In short, I've
run into no big resistance -- but is the fight worth it?

Has anyone out there had any experience? Thoughts?
Peter McDonald
Collection Development
Syracuse University Library
Tel# 315-443-2977