RE: Fascinating quotation

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Dear Mark,

You would have us believe that medical libraries never discontinue
periodicals, and, if they did, availability elsewhere would not be a
factor.

First, even for a truly first rate medical library like Cornell there are
presumably some biomedicine related journals which you do not get, and for
which you rely on document delivery, from, among other places, the nlm.  
Unless there is a sharp discriminating factor between the worthwhile and
the worthless rather than an imperceptible transition, there must also be
a few journals of about the same importance to which you do subscribe.  I
wonder if you mean you would not drop even the most scientifically
insignificant biomedical journal if 90% of its articles were CERTAINLY
available on line at the nlm?

Second, there are many fields of some relation to medicine at least
occasionally. A journal on the subject of bioethics, say, which you would
certainly get, might have any article referring to any imaginable major or
minor journal in philosophy. Surely you collect only the more important
philosophy titles, not them all, and would discontinue them much more
readily than titles in medicine, and availability elsewhere would be one
ofthe factors.

Third, I think the same argument you make also applies to key libraries of
major international status in their own subject fields.  Chemistry
librarians regard their subject and its journals to be every bit as
important as you view medicine. They too will not discontinue anything
nontrivial in their central area until it becomes available otherwise--
then, there is a level of low use and quality that they will consider.  
Further, just as philosophy is a subject of secondary importance to you,
medicine might be a very secondary subject to them.

Finally, I can offer you direct proof that some medical research libraries
would discontinue some medical titles.  They already have. All faculty in
medical schools do research, but there are many medical schools supported
by a considerably smaller library than yours. They, obviously, do not
subscribe to some of the biomedical titles that you subscribe to.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Mark Funk
Sent: Fri 12/17/2004 5:38 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Fascinating quotation
 
I suspect that, rather than two blind men trying to describe an elephant,
Joe and I are actually describing two different animals.

Aggregator products like EBSCOhost, Project MUSE and JSTOR are typically
subscribed to by academic libraries, not by medical libraries. In fact,
JSTOR has no journals in medicine, health, or the biomedical sciences; and
Project MUSE has only six titles. I don't doubt that Joe's clients are
correct in saying that libraries are cancelling journals because of their
later availability in these packages. But those are not medical libraries.

The topic under discussion was the NIH proposal, which will affect the
biomedical literature. As I stated earlier, biomedical users have an
urgent need for immediate access to the latest literature. For medical
librarians, cancellation of a journal because SOME articles MIGHT show up
six months later is not a viable option. The medical library is a
different animal from an academic library, and comparisons must be done
with caution.

I wonder if the ALPSP study differentiates between these two markets?

Mark Funk