RE: Is it time to stop printing journals?

[Maryanne Kennan <maryanne.kennan@unsw.edu.au>]

G'day, As a reader I find that the electronic equivalent of 
browsing is the alert from publishers, aggregators or services 
such as Web of Science. For the 10 or so journals I would have 
once regularly browsed in the library, I have set up alerts, 
which go to a separate box in my e-mail account. I browse them as 
I would the paper journal, when I have the time or need a break. 
As with hardcopy, the ones my institution has subscriptions to I 
can go straight to the article, but the bonus is that I can also 
get alerts for journals not held by my institution and make a 
decision about document supply straight away rather than waiting 
for an indexing or abstracting service to find it.

Regards, Mary Anne
School of Information Systems, Technology and Management
Faculty of Business (incorporating the AGSM)
The University of New South Wales
NSW  2052   AUSTRALIA

-----owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu wrote: -----

To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
From: "Michel G Wesseling" <m.wesseling@inter.nl.net>
Sent by: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Date: 04/01/2007 06:14AM
Subject: RE: Is it time to stop printing journals?

Following this discussion I would be interested to hear some 
experiences from you on the following topic.

One big advantage of the print version of a journal is the fact 
that scholars come to the library to see what new issues of the 
journals that they are interested in have arrived. They than pick 
up these issues and browse through them: scan the table of 
contents, look at an index, quickly read through some abstracts, 
take a look at the book reviews and so on. This kind of 
serendipity browsing is lacking in the e-journals.

I can understand that publishers would be interested to see how
people deal with this in the e-environment, because selling
advertisements is -in my opinion-- strongly related specifically
to this aspect.

Like to hear your comments, suggestions, experiences.

Kind greetings,
Michel Wesseling
Head of Library and IT Services
Institute of Social Studies Den Haag Netherlands

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Greg Tananbaum
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 1:50 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Is it time to stop printing journals?

Scott Plutchak from UAB writes in his blog response:

"We certainly don't need to keep the print to satisfy our user
base.  Two years ago we stopped getting any print for our
ScienceDirect titles.  I did not get a single question, comment,
or expression of concern from faculty or students.  We've reached
the point where librarians tend to worry a lot more about the
print than the people who use our libraries do."

I am curious to hear whether this is a commonly held sentiment.
In other words, do the librarians on this list have the sense
that their patrons are operating in a post-print world (not in
the OA/PMC/Battle Royale sense of the term, but meaning have we
outgrown print)?  If so, this would be a remarkable shift, and a
remarkably quick one.  Certainly when I helped launch The
Berkeley Electronic Press in 2000, print was sacrosanct.  The
idea of a viable electronic-only journal publisher was met with
feedback running the wide gamut from skepticism to scorn.  If
this equation has indeed flipped in a matter of a half-dozen or
so years, this ranks as one of the most important periods in
scholarly communication history.

Best, Greg

Greg Tananbaum
gtananbaum@gmail.com