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Re: Fascinating quotation

I suspect that, rather than two blind men trying to describe an elephant,
Joe and I are actually describing two different animals.

Aggregator products like EBSCOhost, Project MUSE and JSTOR are typically
subscribed to by academic libraries, not by medical libraries. In fact,
JSTOR has no journals in medicine, health, or the biomedical sciences; and
Project MUSE has only six titles. I don't doubt that Joe's clients are
correct in saying that libraries are cancelling journals because of their
later availability in these packages. But those are not medical libraries.

The topic under discussion was the NIH proposal, which will affect the
biomedical literature. As I stated earlier, biomedical users have an
urgent need for immediate access to the latest literature. For medical
librarians, cancellation of a journal because SOME articles MIGHT show up
six months later is not a viable option. The medical library is a
different animal from an academic library, and comparisons must be done
with caution.

I wonder if the ALPSP study differentiates between these two markets?

Mark Funk
Head, Collection Development
Weill Cornell Medical Library
1300 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-746-6073
mefunk@mail.med.cornell.edu


At 12:01 AM -0500 12/14/04, Electronic Content Licensing Discussion wrote:

From: Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Fascinating quotation
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 17:37:18 EST

The problem with Mark Funk's viewpoint is that it represents the way he
would like the world to be, but not how it is.  I happen to want the world
to be the same way, but I have been disabused by the facts in the
marketplace.

The problem is simply that librarians are already cancelling subscriptions
when material can be found in another form at a later date.  Recently
clients have informed me that when they specifically asked librarians why
particular journals were cancelled, they were told that the reason was
that the journals were available from EBSCO Host, Project Muse, and (most
astonishing to my mind), JSTOR.  The reason the JSTOR example sticks out
for me is that JSTOR famously has a "moving wall," where some materials
may not be available for several years after initial publication.  One
publisher who told me that librarians pointed to JSTOR as the reason for
cancellations has a 5-year moving wall.  I simply do not see how 5 years
with JSTOR is irrelevant when we discuss 6 months with the NIH.