An
Integrated Approach to Managing Electronic Journals: The Purdue University
Experience
and
Emily
R. Mobley,
Dean of Libraries and Esther Ellis Norton Distinguished Professor in Library
Science
The
concept for the current Purdue University Library organization dates back to the
1940's when then library director Moriarty developed the vision of having many
subject libraries located in the buildings where faculty offices and
laboratories were located. The idea
was to have all needed information and services “down the hall” from the
users. This was an achievable and
laudable goal in its day. The cost
of materials was relatively inexpensive, there were fewer users and buildings,
and there was relatively little interdisciplinary research.
When library director Dagnese arrived in 1972, he found 28 libraries in
operation. During his tenure the
number of libraries was reduced to 15, where it still stands in 2001.
Nine of these libraries serve STM disciplines.
In the intervening years, the sheer cost of library materials coupled
with the lack of expandable space essentially forced the “break-down” of the
original vision. The greatly rising
cost of materials meant that the Libraries could no longer afford to pay for the
increasing costs of unique materials let alone the cost for the extensive
duplication needed to support the original concept.
Even if it had been possible to maintain the duplication, with the
increasing volume of new materials produced, it would have been necessary to
secure far more space than was available. When
the Undergraduate Library was opened in 1982, a 1M volume storage facility was
built as part of the structure in order to accommodate the increasing collection
size. This meant that as
collections grew, each library kept a smaller percentage of its collection in
its local space. As duplication was
reduced and interdisciplinary needs increased, it became increasingly difficult
for users to obtain their needed resources without walking from library to
library or waiting for document delivery services.
The
Library’s vision for well over a decade has been to have the actual
information, not merely bibliographic information, delivered to the user’s
“desk-top” electronically. For
a number of years a selection of bibliographic databases had been made available
using networked resources. The desire was to have real efficiency and increase
the productivity of users. The
potential to actually realize this vision was made possible only within the last
few years with changes in technology and publishing output. The impact of our work to deliver information to the user’s
desktop has been well stated by one user, “ It’s ironic, but the more useful
the library gets, the less I actually enter it.”
Elsevier
was one of the earliest publishers to offer access to electronic versions of its
journals. Purdue was an early
customer because this offered a way to further the library’s vision.
What we rapidly discovered was significant changes were necessary in
acquiring electronic content and managing access to that content.
In addition, and perhaps more important, we found a need to work at
affecting change in publisher’s products, ideology, and pricing structures.
The most significant impact was the human effort involved from the
standpoint of time and changes in processes and workflow.
At
a very early stage we involved a number of STM faculty.
This included discussions about our vision as well as joint meetings with
major publishers. These sessions were time-consuming but key to educating
faculty about the various issues as well as providing an opportunity for
publishers to hear directly from their “real” users.
The latter was always instrumental in helping to effect desirable changes
with publishers. At the same time
we reiterated the philosophy that collection development should be just as
conscious for electronic content as print content and that essentially selection
policies should remain the same. This
means that electronic access decisions are made in the same manner as with other
resources – is it needed for curriculum and/or research; and how it fits the
Libraries priorities in terms of funding. This philosophy extends to all electronic content, not only
electronic journals. Our collection
development policy has caused some rather prolonged contract negotiations
because of the initial “all or nothing” philosophy of
some publishers. In fact,
there is one major publisher with whom we have yet to effect an agreement due to
this policy.
There
are other issues as important as collection development.
The importance of institutional goals should not be overlooked.
As a land-grant institution, Purdue University has a philosophy of
service and engagement with Indiana citizens as well as accessibility to
resources. These institutional
goals more than suggested that walk-in access to electronic resources as is
possible with print collections should be permissible.
The fact that Purdue University is located in a less populated area at
least 65 miles away from a major city has been helpful in ensuring the
successful negotiation of this desire. Likewise,
this institutional philosophy led us to ensuring that interlibrary loan or
document delivery in some form is also permissible. This point and royalty-free copies for course packs have been
two of the more difficult negotiation points.
Stable URL’s to journal front pages is a non-negotiable demand for
publishers. In order to create an
efficient and productive environment, a user should not be required to search
through a bibliographic layer or know the publisher in order to locate a known
title and/or article. This point
was difficult for publishers to grasp earlier because they had really never
considered all the access issues from the end-user view.
Again, this is where joint discussions with faculty, one set of
end-users, helped to effect change. There
is however one major STM society publisher that has yet to develop its system to
accommodate this demand. The
publisher continues to be shocked that we refuse to accept the product as
offered and that the faculty has not demanded our heads in a guillotine.
Once
access to electronic content has been secured, we have to facilitate its use.
In order to do this, we have to let our patrons know the resources exist,
and we have to make them easy to use.
In
order to reach all your patrons, you have to set your traps in as many places as
possible. For the print journal
browser, a sign in the current journal area works nicely.
For the web-based researchers, links off the departmental library web
pages will snag their interest. Email
notices of new acquisitions may get the attention of researchers that link
directly to the content and tend to go through the library only when necessary.
Above all, it is important to have a place that patrons (and library
staff) can go to see definitively whether we have a title available
electronically or not. In
Purdue’s case, the online catalog is the database of record for all items,
electronic, print and other media. Patrons
and staff know that, if a title is available through the libraries, it will be
in the catalog. They can thus go to
one place and get all the information they need about its availability.
Setting up this expectation is important so that the patron is not
confused about where they should go for information.
Once
patrons are aware of the availability of journals and other e-content online, we
need to make access as easy as possible, with a minimum amount of cognitive
overhead for the user. The catalog
provides a definitive list of holdings, but having to go through several screens
to get to the ejournal links, as is the default way to do the search, is too
cumbersome for patrons. What
patrons will do is, once they find the link for the journal, they will bookmark
it rather than accessing it again through the catalog.
Thus, this would encourage patrons to sidestep the library when accessing
resources, disconnecting them from all the new services and collections that we
make available over time. Thus, we
needed to reduce the amount of work required to get to the journal links.
The
Voyager Web OPAC allows one to write scripts to query the library catalog
without having to go through the front end.
Thus, all the hard work can be buried in the script, and one can search
just for the ejournals (for example, to the user’s search, the script can
append a set limits command to only retrieve periodicals and items in electronic
format, thereby retrieving just the records a patron wants).
Thus, instead of the three screens to get to the appropriate search menu
in the catalog, the two screens to limit the results, and finally picking the
correct record (assuming the user is well-versed enough in the structure of the
catalog to be able to efficiently search and limit their results), Carl Snow,
our Libraries webmaster, created a script containing a single search box on our
Ejournals page that will allow for keyword searching of titles, as well as an
option to spit out the master list of available ejournals.
One still has to click through the library record to get to the link, but
this shortens the process of identifying an ejournal considerably, and makes it
an access mechanism that patrons will actually consider using (and it there is
no staff overhead to maintain this ejournal list).
For the convenience of users, some of our departmental library web sites
also have one-click access to subject-specific lists that individual librarians
maintain. For these lists, we still
refer users to the master list if they cannot find the title they are looking
for on the subject-specific list.
Even
though there has been some success in affecting desired change in publishers,
and we have been able to market and provide useful and reliable access to our
patrons, there continue to be issues that seem to remain outside of our
influence. The cross-linking of
journals is one issue. Purdue’s
vision is for users to be able to go from ANY electronic indexing source
directly to the electronic text of the article.
Some publishers are working together through a Cross-ref project to link
from bibliographies within an article to a cited article.
The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) is working with some
publishers to link articles to citations in its Web
of Science. Unfortunately,
there is no real progress on the ubiquitous ability for a user to link to
articles reliably from any electronic indexing source.
Electronic journal layout and navigation within that journal essentially
are at the whims of the publisher. It
would be easier for users if more commonality existed and publishers would
comply with industry standards. As
a means of influencing publishers, when we identify non-compliant journals, we
delay acquiring access until standards are met.
It is very important for librarians to work with publishers to create changes when necessary. We are the facilitators for our users. In order to have success, we must communicate with both our users and the publishers. It is important for publishers to receive consistent messages. If a product does not meet the desired specifications, the most important leverage the consumer (library) has is to not purchase or acquire access. If no one is buying, you can be assured that the product will be changed to meet the specifications. It is important for users to be informed of the issues and the status of negotiations, particularly in cases when an agreement cannot be reached. As has been stated earlier, Purdue has refused to sign on with some major publishers over “all or nothing” access, exorbitant pricing, overly restrictive license terms, lack of a stable front page, and partial access to the entire journal content or delayed access. Our users support our decisions because they know WHY.
Contact
the Authors:
Emily
Mobley
Dean
of Libraries
Purdue University
1530
Stewart Ctr
West
Lafayette, IN 47907
emobley@purdue.edu
765-494-2900;
fax 765-494-0156