RE: What are the Key Library Issues?

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> Yes indeed; in the absence of reliability all the other factors are
> non-existent.

Well, not exactly non-existent.  In the absence of reliability, the cost
factor can still move us, and often does.  That's why so many of us use
HighWire, which costs us nothing, but which offers no guarantee of ongoing
access to any particular title.  Even when unreliable access costs money,
most libraries are still willing to buy it, as long as the cost is low
enough; that's the premise on which many aggregated databases (which
provide access to thousands of journals and magazines at a very low
per-title cost) are founded.  While I expect my access to the database
itself to be reliable, I recognize that the low per-title charge means a
trade-off: ongoing access to any _particular_ title is not guaranteed.  
But that's fine with my library because we don't think of the aggregator
as a robust source for any particular title; we use it as a big bag of
articles that primarily supports low-intensity undergraduate research.  
When we want reliable access to particular titles, we pay more (usually
directly to the publishers) and get some level of guaranteed access in
return.

-------------
Rick Anderson
Director of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu