From pmetz@vt.edu Mon Sep  8 14:35:46 1997
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 09:52:56 -0500
From: Paul Metz <pmetz@vt.edu>
To: "Edward A. Fox" <fox@fox.cs.vt.edu>
Cc: hitch@vt.edu, jeustis@vt.edu
Subject: Re: digital library subscriptions?

We are of course aware of the emerging marketplace of electronic journals.
Apart from our role as publisher, we are already subscribing to some and
are exploring a variety of alternatives, both on as an individual library
and as a member of VIVA. I think of this marketplace as having four
components. Let me respond re each one.

1. The occasional stray title you get just on its own. We get _Journal of
Biological Chemistry_ and a few other key journals this way, and we support
some freebies such as the electronic _Chronicle_ through our Web site. We
realize this isn't where the important action will lie, but we are
opportunistic when appropriate.

2. The emergence of full text delivery behind traditional A&I databases.
Our biggest success here, achieved in concert with the other VIVA
libraries, has been the IAC databases, chiefly Expanded Academic Index and
General Business File. These are major, very heavily used A&I databases
with simple access to the articles behind the citations. Several
FirstSearch databases, including ArticleFirst, FastDoc and Business and
Industry, also offer document delivery. In this case VIVA pays for the A&I
but the library picks up the tab. To our knowledge we are the only VIVA
participant that's been willing to do this, and we are continuing to
subsidize article delivery at $2.90 a pop.

3. Electronic journals published by individual publishers. The IDEAL
package of nearly 200 journals published by Academic Press has been VIVA's
biggest success in this area. All articles from any Academic journal to
which any one VIVA library subscribes are available, full text. Similarly,
through VIVA we receive about 20 Johns Hopkins journals through Project
Muse and a number of critical mathematics journals from the AMS. As you
indicate, other publishers are doing this as well. Most of these projects
don't have that much appeal to us because Elsevier (with whom we were a
patient and I must say long-suffering beta site) and the others don't
publish enough of the journals in any one discipline to make it worth
patrons' time to look. Even Academic has this problem to a degree. I think
a nicely defined niche publisher like ACM might be an exception, and I'm
trying to get more information on their offerings. What Ed Lener has is
heavily geared to the individual subscriber, but he plans to find out about
institutional rates.

I may as well mention that all offers like this that we have seen so far
have steep price tags, including in the IEEE case about a 15% surcharge.
We just cancelled $620,000 of our serials and are *still* looking at over a
$100,000 drop funds for books and other discretionary one-time purchases!
Does this constrain our ability to acquire journals in a duplicative
format? Of course it does.

4. Electronic journals published by aggegators. We think the approach of
people like Blackwell and OCLC (the horse we'd rather back) is very
promising. It would allow libraries to tailor their own lists of journals,
so that a package achieving critical mass in specific disciplines might be
offered. The advantage is that you can get to this critical mass by
combining key titles from multiple publishers without being captive to
their idiosyncratic search engines and platforms.

The VIVA collections committee, of which I am acting chair, has recommended
that a task force be established to study electronic journals in depth.
Locally, we are studying our entire approach to automated resources,
including the means by which we catalog electronic journals. We're not
totally convinced that we are offering the best support for them we can.
Frankly we face some limits also with VTLS and are envious of libraries
whose catalogs provide hot links to e-journals.

You will easily find the 250+ electronic journals we currently support by
looking at full-text electronic journals at teh Libraries' home page,
www.lib.vt.edu. These don't count the many journals that stand behind the
A&I services, since those are not readily accessible as discrete
bibliographic entities.

I have shared this as well as your original inquiry with Eileen. I hope you
find it a useful summary of where we stand, and I'd value your reactions.
Cheers.


Paul Metz, Principal Bibliographer, Virginia Tech University Libraries
           P.O. Box 90001 / Blacksburg VA / 24062-9001
Phone: (540) 231-5663   FAX: (540) 231-3694
pmetz@vt.edu