Re: eJournals - "subscription" period

[smedina@ache.state.al.us]

Under Alabama law, the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries cannot
contract for something we do not receive--so Jan-Dec licenses that we sign
in mid-year must be prorated to bill only for the months remaining in the
Jan-Dec year, or we have to wait until Jan to acquire the license.

The argument that "you get the whole year" can only apply if we are buying
a product. Thus, the electronic medium must be sold to us outright (not
just licensed for access while we are current subscribers) so we can own
it forever!  The vendor would have to guarantee perpetual access to that
portion of the electronic file we acquired -- and so far, none have agreed
to do that.

Hope this helps,

Sue O. Medina
Director
Network of Alabama Academic Libraries
smedina@ache.state.al.us

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>From hammes@ais.up.ac.za Tue Jun 20 04:57:26 2000
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 10:56:29 +0200
From: Monica Hammes <hammes@ais.up.ac.za>
Organization: Academic Information Service, University of Pretoria
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: eJournals - "subscription" period

It seems that both publishers and journal vendors consider ejournals on
par with pjournals as far as "subscription period" is concerned resulting
in the following kind of scenario with which we are presently grappling:

A client requests a subscription to an ejournal which will probably become
available at the beginning of July resulting in a five to six months usage
period this year. Yet the publisher and provider request payment for the
entire calendar year because we "will indeed be receiving all the issues
for the year"

Are there any solutions out there for this version of the access vs
ownership problem apart from the e-archives?

Monica Hammes
Academic Information Service
University of Pretoria