RE: Elsevier and cancellations

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Kent Mulliner [SMTP:mulliner@ohiou.edu]
> Sent:	Thursday, August 19, 1999 8:31 AM
> To:	liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject:	Re: Elsevier and cancellations
 
	[Hamaker, Chuck]  Kent Mulliner says: 
	 
>  Such data for 1998/99 tell me that
> 71% of the titles from which we downloaded were not held in print and that
> 59% of the articles were from titles that we did not own.

	[Hamaker, Chuck] , Given what I saw at LSU in terms of use of
document delivery from Uncover, it's not unusual to see relatively heavy
use of titles not owned by the institution. What Bensman and Wilder(see
their article at: http://www.lib.lsu.edu/collserv/lrts/index.html found on
further examination of those "unowned" titles that faculty and grad
students were able to find key journals in adjacent fields, in fact this
kind of use, interdisciplinary (or that's what we tend to think of it as)
is for articles in key journals in other fields. It's not unusual to see,
for example, students and faculty in Social Work using articles from key
journals in medical fields.

	[Hamaker, Chuck] However, what I think everyone is waiting to see
is that if in negotiating for publishers who are using "package" sales,
like Academic with IDEAL or MCB with its panoply of titles consortia can
if fact de-specify titles. Or, using the California State model, in fact
specify which journals ARE included. gumming up the works, so to speak,
with second or third tier journals means we aren't doing much better than
the internet. The key to getting our users to what they need is in fact
the old old practice of selection. If we shotgun our users with
everything, we devalue the more important informaiton. And although we
might think we are doing "good" by providing them with all that "full
text" we are doing a disservice in wasting their time having to filter for
the best material, and doing those who are not "experts" in information
seeking skills a disservice. One of the major complaints from faculty is
all the "stuff" being cited by undergrads from the internet without
apparent ability to tell the good from the bad.

	So, I agree that the utilization data is important, but it's also
important to know what the utilization data mean. If you are supporting a
School of Social Work and NOT a School of Nursing, or medical program, you
still need key journals from the "other" literature. Self-Identifying such
cross-over literatures is what is happening, I believe, with the data Kent
reports and also in Jim Mouw's recent comments at ALA in New Orleans to
the Science Direct user's group.  [Hamaker, Chuck] Journal use, even in
the electronic everything is accessible environment, is NOT random.That
point is sometimes lost as librarians look at use in journals they (or the
faculty of their institutions) do not always know. Quality is still
quality, even in the full text environment. (IMHO :)

	It will be interesting as Ohiolink and others analyze their use
data so see if these generalizations hold up. Personally, I believe they
will.

	Chuck Hamaker
	UnC Charlotte.