Re: Elsevier and cancellations

[Tony Ferguson <ferguson@columbia.edu>]

Isn't it that the current statistics show that, when given the
opportunity, people use journals that their library would not have owned?  
Their libraries did not own these journals because with limited budgets
they bought some and not others.  But that doesn't mean that users
wouldn't want it otherwise.

I think the issue is that we are now in a different world.  The old world
was one of the people who read journals don't live in libraries, to read
the journals they have to go to the libraries, spend time there browsing
and photocopying for real reading.  They browsed the ones that were
available to them, but didn't get to browse the ones not owned.  Now the
people who read journals do live in the virtual library -- in this case
populated by Elsevier, etc., journals.  When they look up topics or
authors they find things in journals that they didn't previously have
access.  They become aware of titles that they didn't previously get to
access.

Libraries don't have any more money now than in the past but we can spend
it differently.  That is my argument.  tony

_______

"Hamaker, Chuck" wrote:

> I don't think that is the argument I was making Tony, the argument is good
> journals will out, even in the online environment. When you go look at
> what people used, it tends to be key journals in fields they weren't
> necessarily going to have you buy in the print environment..  the
> collateral usage is of the good stuff, not of the less important journals
> (even if we didn't know the field, that's what people tend to use)
>
> Chuck