RE: Ask a Live Librarian Online

["Rich Dodenhoff" <rdodenhoff@aspet.org>]

Taken to its extreme, treating online "unaffiliated" users as the
equivalent of "walk in users" allows one subscription to serve the world.  
I think most publishers would find it difficult to work with that model.

Richard Dodenhoff
Journals Director
American Society for Pharmacology and
  Experimental Therapeutics
9650 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20814-3995
301.634.7997 (p) / 301.634.7061 (f)

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Tom Williams
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2005 7:02 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Ask a Live Librarian Online

We've been offering "live chat" for a couple of years now.  The vast
majority of our chat users are affiliated students and faculty, most
especially distance education students.  When they request a specific
article that we subscribe to electronically, we usually link them
automatically to the article and let them print/download or whatever.  
However, there is nothing to stop us, based on my interpretation of our
license, to simply send them the article directly to their email. Again,
these are our own students, faculty, etc. who are "authorized users" as
defined by our licenses.

It is different when someone logs in to chat and is not affiliated with
our institution and thus not an authorized user.  We offer them the same
Reference and other services available on chat but they are unable to link
directly to the article nor can we send them the article by email. We can,
however, print the article and send/fax it to them or scan it for Ariel
transmission.

However, someone made the point that these "unaffiliated" users coming in
to the Online Chat line should be considered "walk in users."  I'm not
sure if our publishers/vendors would buy into this but it's a nice
thought.  Given that we are all becoming very much libraries without
walls, can a case be made for this?  Perhaps this is a topic for further
discussion.

Tom Williams