RE: Article based subscription

["Hunter, Karen (ELS)" <k.hunter@elsevier.com>]

Thanks to Rick Anderson for pointing out that I hadn't been clear in my
explanation -- or perhaps that I had assumed that more people understood
the context than is probably the case.

In the paper world one subscribes to a title and owns it.  One can also
purchase an individual photocopy and own and keep that copy as well.
However, in most cases that photocopy is given to the person requesting it
and does not remain a part of the library's permanent collection.  You do
not expect that the publisher will provide more photocopies of that
article for no additional charge.

In the electronic world we are all still figuring out how to implement
subscription and individual article purchasing.  What the Elsevier
ScienceDirect standard agreement provides is that if you purchase a title
as an electronic subscription, you can use it as much as you like and you
have permanent electronic rights to the years to which you subscribed.  
So, yes, we fully understand the principle of being able to keep what you
pay for.

In addition to subscription titles, we have different arrangements under
which ScienceDirect customers can access non-subscribed titles on an
article-by-article basis.  Typically that means an individual downloads or
prints the article and has it for his or her personal use. The article is
not, once acquired, automatically available from our system to everyone
else within that user community.  And that was what was tested in PEAK --
essentially "switching on" articles in non-subscribed titles once they had
been purchased once by someone in the community.

To the best of my knowledge no online system currently does this.  I know
that as a result of PEAK some publishers are considering it and so are we.
Perhaps to Mr. Anderson it should have been obvious to do this, but if you
understand the tendancy on the part of both librarians and publishers to
carry over print models into electronic, it is not so surprising that it
has not been done.  So, I am delighted that the University of Michigan
conceived of this feature when designing the PEAK experiment, I continue
to say that it is "intriguing" and to feel good that we are open to new
models that make use of the possibilities not there in paper.

Karen Hunter
Senior Vice President
Elsevier Science
k.hunter@elsevier.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Anderson [mailto:rick_anderson@uncg.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 1999 6:26 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Article based subscription


Karen Hunter wrote:

> There are a number of ideas we want to consider from PEAK, including 
> the notion that once an article has been "bought", it is permanently 
> available to the whole authorized community at that school.  This is an
> intriguing notion, described to me as building a collection one article
> at a time.

Um... am I misunderstanding something here?  Why should the idea of a
purchased article remaining permanently available to the library community
be an "intriguing" idea?  Wouldn't Elsevier *expect* libraries to insist
that they be able to keep what they've paid for?

----------------------
Rick Anderson
Head Acquisitions Librarian
Jackson Library
UNC Greensboro
1000 Spring Garden St.
Greensboro, NC 27402-6175
PH (336) 334-5281
FX (336) 334-5399
rick_anderson@uncg.edu
http://www.uncg.edu/~r_anders