RE: Dow Jones/Factiva Database

["Kathy Perry" <kperry@gmu.edu>]

VIVA is currently negotiating a contract with Factiva.  I had hoped that
another consortium had already plowed this minefield for us, but I fear we
may be among the first.  For others on this listserv, be warned that their
current draft contract has no relationship to academic libraries or
consortia.  For example, there is no mention of walk-in access or fair
use, both essential to our work.  As we know, academic libraries represent
a very small portion of their business.  Their current draft requires a
complete overhaul.

I would add a couple of other technical concerns to the discussion.  
While Netscape might have only 4% of the total market, we have schools
reporting that student/faculty use of Netscape continues to be much, much
higher, perhaps as high as 1/3 at one doctoral level institution.

But that's not all.  Not only is the Factiva product designed for the
highest end of Internet Explorer (IE 5.01 and up), it is also not designed
for Macs.  In fact, our tech rep told us that there are no guarantees
about it working in the Mac environment. Again, this is not trivial.  
Later, he said that "there may be some 'idiosyncrasies'" with both the Mac
and any Netscape version below Netscape 6.  They are prepared to try to
work around these idiosyncrasies, but this isn't going to reduce the
frustration levels for the users or the librarians.

And there's more, it also appears there are problems using ezproxy and our
members report they have be sure to have the most current version of
ezproxy.

In a state currently facing severe budget cutbacks and students facing
enormous tuition increases (some as high as 25% this year), Factiva's
extraordinarily limited design standards pose a real burden to our users
and our library members.  I hope others among this listserv will voice
your concerns to Factiva.

Katherine A. Perry
VIVA Director
703/993-4652
703/993-4662 (fax)
kperry@gmu.edu

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 4:22 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Dow Jones/Factiva Database

We have already switched to Factiva (had to).  Here are my experiences
with DJI/Factiva as well as other databases/vendors like LexisNexis, Ebsco
Newspaper Source, Newsbank, etc.

A. The mass content removal by DJI/Factiva is not new.  All other full
text indexes vendors have been doing exactly the same.  The first such
mass content removal I can remember was over 600 (or more) UMI business
titles removed from LexisNexis Academic in 1998.  This is NOT something we
can negotiate, and it is out of our control.

B. "Dynamic" has been the feature of full-text indexes.  Now even E
journals like MUSE and ECO, which are supposed to be more stable and have
permanent archive, have shown some dynamic features.

C. Chicago Tribune, together with about 40 major US newspapers, have had
"exclusive" deal with Newsbank, which means other vendors have lost
contract with these newspapers.  Again, "exclusive" deal is not new and is
not limited to newspapers.  Harvard Business Review now is only available
on Ebsco Business Source.

D. At present, we have access to both DJI and Factiva, and I have noticed
that LA Times is no longer accessible on DJI, but is still there on
Factiva.

E. I have noticed that the content list of DJI/Factiva is less reliable
than the lists from other vendors.  Sometimes you do not have full text
access even if the content list has the title.  DJI's proxy server
setting/configuration is more complicated too.  I have not done the
Factiva proxy server configuration yet.

F. We were concerned in Spring 02 when we had Factiva trial and learned
that Factiva's browser limit.  Netscape 4.x was the supported browser on
our campus.  Later, we switched the support to IE.  I am not worried about
browser issue anymore, because the most recent statistics show that
Netscape world market has shrunk from about 40% in 1999 to less than 4% in
2002.

On the whole, it seems to be the trend that the content of full-text
indexes is deteriorating (e.g., more key titles removed, more embargoed
titles, etc), and it seems we as librarians can do nothing about it. And
our professional organizations (ALA and ACRL) even helped the trend of
content deterioration, as in the case of Tasini.

---
Xiaotian Chen
Electronic Services Librarian
Bradley University
Peoria, IL 61625
Phone: 309-677-2839
Fax: 309-677-2558
http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~chen/

> ------------------------------
> From: Carole Richter <Carole.J.Richter.8@nd.edu>
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Dow Jones/Factiva Database
>
> Colleagues,
>
> Have any of you been struggling with the prospect of change from Dow 
> Jones Interactive to Factiva? We are quite concerned about a number of
> developments, and hope someone may have more reassuring news to offer. 
> Not too long ago we were told that the move to Factiva would take
> place in early September, but the most recent information from our rep
> is December.
>
> That's good, because we found that our trial version required IE 5.1 or
> higher (no access to Netscape browsers or Macintosh platform). The new
> contract specifies that Factiva can cancel content at any time without
> notice. In response to some reports of removed content from our users, I
> asked for a list of content changes. The spreadsheet I got listed 4,000 
> of 12,000 titles as being discontinued! Worse, some titles that we've 
> lost access to (Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Baltimore Sun) are listed
> as 'Active' on the Factiva list I received, so clearly 4,000 isn't
> even a reliable figure. We can get citations to those sources, but not
> text. I hoped this was an access error, but our rep confirmed that they
> are no longer available in full text from DJ/Factiva. As disappointing
> as that is, my real concern is that the discontinued list, however
> lengthy, seems to be incomplete.
>
> I was surprised that we had gotten a renewal invoice this summer 
> *before* getting a copy of the new license agreement. Presumably if we
> can't negotiate any desired changes to the terms we could lose access
> to content we have paid for already too.
>
> Thanks for your ideas or experience with this provider,
>
> Carole Richter Pilkinton
> Electronic Resources Librarian
> University of Notre Dame Libraries
> (574) 631-8405
> richter.8@nd.edu