Re: quality of Service

["John Cox" <John.E.Cox@btinternet.com>]

David Goodman makes a good point.  Many publishers - or their contractors
do maintain mirror sites; built-in redundancy is vital to the maintenance
of continuous and reliable service.

Perhaps the best example I know of a company that has always taken this
issue seriously is CatchWord, which hosts journals from many publishers,
including Taylor & Francis, Mary Ann Liebert, Lawrence Erlbaum, MIT Press
etc.  CatchWord has not one or two mirror sites, but a world-wide network
of over ten servers.  This deals with the problem of slow response times
due to Internet congestion as well as the failure of any one - or two,
three etc - server.

John Cox
Johnn Cox Associates

-----Original Message-----
From: David Goodman (dgoodman@Princeton.EDU) <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>;
liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Date: 31 August 2000 21:08
Subject: Re: quality of Service


>
>The recent and continuing service failure at OUP due to theft of their
>service providers computer equipment makes evident the absolute necessity
>for any publisher offerring ejournals or databases to provide a mirror
>site or other immediately accessible backup.
>
>It is noteworthy that most of the free preprint sites offer this facility.
>For an enterprise charging money for the service not to offer it is
>inexcusably immature business practice.
>
>I think this requirement should be added to the standard contract terms.
>The use of electronic media to replace paper cannot be taken as a
>responsible proposition otherwise.