Creative Collection Development in an Electronic Journal Age: Librarian and Publisher Perspectives: A Report from the ACRL New England Chapter Serials Interest Group’s Spring 1998 Program

Abstract:

Presents a summary report of the Association of College and Research Libraries New England Chapter’s Serials Interest Group’s Spring 1998 program, which dealt with collection development issues surrounding electronic journals. The program’s three principal speakers each dealt with the impact of electronic journals on library collections, both in economic and practical terms. This author’s summary report focuses on the key points made by each of the speakers in their presentations.

Serials specialists from around the New England area gathered at Harvard’s Gutman Education Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the ACRL New England Chapter Serials Interest Group’s Spring 1998 Program, which focused on the issues faced in selecting and managing electronic journal collections. Rebecca Breedlove, Head of Serials at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Chair of the ACRL New England Chapter Serials Interest Group, welcomed the participants and guests to the forum. The program emphasized that the impact electronic journals have on libraries in both economic and practical terms presents new opportunities and challenges for serials librarians in the academic environment.

Gene L. Weimers, Director, Bates College Library
Birdie MacLennan, Serials Coordinator, Bailey/Howe Library, University of Vermont
Patricia Sabosik, Vice President and General Manager of Science Direct with Elsevier in New York

Journals 101: The New Fundamentals of Serials Collecting: Gene Weimers

Gene L. Weimers, the Director of the Maine’s Bates College Library, opened the program by framing the discussion around three general areas: the place of serials in collection development as more and more of these materials move to electronic formats; the economics of the serials market and the role of company power as new formats undermine some of the basic underpinnings of the current serials monopoly; and the response of the library and its parent institution in a era where inflation has allegedly disappeared and access is potentially ubiquitous. On this last point, Gene indicated that serials constitute half of the library’s budget, but it is also a percentage of the parent institution’s overall budget and is therefore noticed because of its large size.

Gene then discussed the fact that electronic media—and journals in particular—lend credence to one of S. R. Ranganathan’s five laws of library science, which he created in 1931:

"Save the time of the reader," and we must start to think of libraries in that regard: an organization that saves the time of the reader. Journals save time by grouping together articles of similar interest, and then adds quality control, in the form of editorial license, that benefits the reader. There is a compelling model that is now developing for the flow of information—either putting it in front of the reader-or as stock information—sitting it on a mechanism such as LEXIS and having the user access the information.

Gene then displayed a series of charts that compared the prices of library materials with consumer prices. The rate of increases in serials has outgrown those in consumer prices, monographs, medical costs, and tuition costs. He then demonstrated the monopoly powers that are held by the publishers of serials materials. These publishers have monopoly powers in the sense that:

• their firm’s activity determines the price and where conditions of a market allow the firm to charge a price that is higher than marginal cost;
• their product has no close substitutes (a journal article is unique);
• barriers of entry exist for new firms or can be created through franchises, patents, licenses or copyright. Economies of scale play a role here;
• publishers have a monopoly because they control both the quantity that will be produced and the price they will charge;
• the quality that is produced affects the price and publishers are able to capture the "consumer surplus" in the form of higher profits;
• monopolies are inefficient in that the price the customer pays is higher than the cost of producing the last unit purchased;
• monopolies do not have the incentive to produce efficiently;
• monopolies are less likely to innovate or cut costs than in competitive industries, since their work is unique.

As a result of this, there has been a 10% increase in the price of journals each year, and this has been fairly constant since 1985. This means that prices double every seven years. In some markets, such as science journals, the prices double every six years. This is in comparison to the fact that consumer prices doubles every 35 years at 2% each year, or every 20 years at 3% each year.

Gene then explained the forces that are at work currently in libraries to deal with this:

• market power: libraries are trimming their serials budget by 2-3% each year;
• libraries are finding the largest consortiums they can belong to and are trying to buy-in on a group license;
• libraries are starting to buy by the piece—a single article as opposed to a journal subscription. This begs the question of whether or not a user would pay more or less for a journal article that is in high demand;
• access to stocks of information (databases) are becoming more timely, and users are identifying with these "stocks" as opposed to the actual journal source (e.g., "I found it on LEXIS" as opposed to "I found it in JAMA")
• scholarly societies will shift their focus from developing scholarly journals to managing databases of subject specialty information.

He sees that five scenarios are developing as a result of this: librarians are paying more attention to use; collection development will continue to respond to the market conditions; the journal is becoming "unbundled", meaning that the information will have to be rebuilt from the journal into a database or finding aid that is indexed at a meta level; models will be encouraged for delivering individual articles, which may impact the overall editorial function; and attempts to extend the brand identification from the journal to the stock information will continue. This means that new pricing models will be developed, and, again, the overall goal seems to be to try to save the time of the reader.

Return to top

The Palatable Electronic Journal: Serving Out Access to End Users (or: Now that You Have Them, What Do You Do With Them?): Birdie MacLennan

The next presentation was given by Birdie MacLennan, the Serials Coordinator at the University of Vermont’s Bailey/Howe Library. Birdie, also co-owner and moderator of the Serialst mailing list, created a web page for her talk which interested parties can access at:

http://www.uvm.edu/~bmaclenn/ACRL/ejtalk98.html

Birdie began her discussion with an interesting stroll through the literature--a cultural perspective on information technology and the "electronic" age, by displaying the titles of books about these subjects during the late 1970s/early 1980s through the present day. The 1970s/early 80s title presented the "introduction" to this new world of technology, with titles such as World of the Computer, and Is the Computer at Tool? The late 1980s/early 1990s saw the integration of the computer into our working and personal lives, with titles such as Cohabitating With Computers, and Toward an Information Society. The present day literature reflects a feeling that people are becoming overwhelmed with all of the new technologies available, with titles such as Digital Delirium and Falling Through the Net. These titles reflect the feeling of many in the serials field, as we strive to keep up with technologies and try to maintain quality and access for our users.

Birdie then pointed out that the current market is characterized by an abundance of experimentation and not many standards. This market includes a wide range of offerings from publishers, aggregates (LEXIS/NEXIS, for example), groups and individuals. She then gave a listing of all of the various access points for electronic journals, which demonstrates the fact that they are not straightforwardly defined. An ejournal in a library today can mean:

• Individual e-journal titles--either free or fee-based;
• Internet accessible sites (aggregates of individual journal titles), either made available on a subscription basis by individual publishers (such as Project Muse and SpringerLink), or made freely available by other entities (often by other libraries, such as the CIC E-Journals Collection)
• CD-ROMs that aggregate titles, often with common subject matter, such as some of the UMI/ProQuest CD-ROM databases (citation indexes, with links to full-text);
• Web-based databases of journal literature, such as Ovid Technologies’ full-text aggregation of STM journals or UMI’s ProQuest Direct, which link references to full-text article databases. Birdie emphasized the fact that sometimes, with these collections, individual journal titles are not easily identifiable as discrete entities with separate URLs. In addition, some matter from the print edition, such as book reviews and letters to the editor, may be omitted. Title content also fluctuates, as titles are added and dropped.
• Online databases—web based or not (such as LEXIS/NEXIS). These type of databases also have title fluctuations.

The web site that Birdie referenced above contains many links to examples of these types of ejournals.

Birdie then focused on the policy issues surrounding the issues of ejournal access. These issues are found at both the national and local levels, the most important being licensing issues as they pertain to access and restrictions to access. They also include presentation and training/orientation issues for users.

There is also a question for libraries concerning maintaining a separate web site for electronic journals versus having them available through the online public access catalog. Should a library maintain two sources or one? This reveals a possible working connection that will be needed between cataloging and systems personnel--both areas may be responsible for providing access points to electronic journals. Birdie then gave some visual examples of the types of systems some libraries currently have in place:

• The University of Pennsylvania Library: The university provides access via their catalog and via the web through two different systems. She then showed examples of how this system works.
• The University of Buffalo Library: This university also provides access via a web site and their NOTIS catalog. Since the NOTIS catalog is not web-based, the university also depends on two different systems for ejournal access. Birdie then demonstrated how the university’s system worked.
• The Research Library at the Los Alamos National Laboratory: This library has one system where the user can access the catalog and the web, and the ejournal web pages are derived from OPAC records. A demonstration of this system was given to those present.

Birdie then indicated that all of these access issues will create the need for new workflow designs for new technologies and new mediums will have to be developed to meet them. More cooperation and coordination of policies are needed, both within and outside of the library--these will include working with administrative sections, systems, technical and public service areas.

Other issues that libraries will have to address to deal with these new systems will include both hardware and software issues, ample CD-ROM drives for electronic supplements, web browsers for all public workstations, protocols for remote access, adobe acrobat for PDF files, quality printers (preferably color), mechanisms for downloading citations or full-text, Z39.50 compatibility, for seamless navigation across available sources, ongoing training in new technologies for library staff and patrons, and permanent and perpetual archives for electronic information.

Birdie then provided some thoughts on the future, and concluded that there seems to be more questions than answers:

• Serials literature will evolve with an increasing trend toward seamless navigation of citation sources to full-text materials. The definition of "serials" will evolve and change. Are there metadata solutions, such as the Dublin Core evolving standard, for bringing electronic resources under some kind of bibliographic control?
• Librarians will have a stronger role to play as educators and information mediators in instructing users to discern quality information sources from less than quality information sources. Are there standards that can be applied to teach users such skills? (Or: how should one know if Bobbi-Sue’s web page, retrieved from the Excite search engine, is just as viable a source as an article retrieved from a citation database [such as Expanded Academic Index] with a reference that points to the full-text source?)
• As "effective users of electronic resources, we must learn to surf the networks with ease, and, on occasion, to swim in information, without drowning in data"—and all the while, protecting the rights of our constituents in their access to information as the basis to knowledge, research and learning.

The bottom line is that users want convenience, and we will have to provide users with information in a format that will be the most effective for their use.

Return to top

"Science Direct"-Elsevier: Patricia Sabosik

The last presentation at the workshop was given by Patricia Sabosik, Vice President and General Manager of Science Direct with Elsevier in New York. Pat’s presentation focused on a number of issues that went beyond a demonstration of Elsevier’s new ejournal service, and provided the participants with a perspective of how the market for electronic services is growing at unprecedented rates, and how libraries are going to have to respond to the needs of this growing population.

Pat’s background included working for America Online, and she shared with the group her findings while working for the largest Internet provider in the United States. Pat indicated that she a lot of experience with gauging the "pain threshold" of the user of technology. The information technology industry is growing twice as fast as all other segments of the U.S. economy. New markets are being created on the Internet.

The Internet market is growing faster than all comparable markets in recent history: radio and television. The number of web hosts will triple in 1998 from 30 million to over 100 million. The number of Internet users will reach 300 million in mid 1998; up from 70 million in January 1998.

Telephone lines and their improving technology has also had an impact on the ability of users to take advantage of telecommunication: in 1956, the first transatlantic telephone cable was laid, comprising of 64 kbits of information. In 1994, the first fiber optic cable was laid, producing 2 gbits of data or 32,000 calls per second. Today, cables are 45 GBs and can handle 720,000 calls per second. This improvement in cable technology has allowed network access to mature into a standard as a acceptable way of using information.

The way that data can be transmitted is also becoming more acceptable: the Internet Data Corporation estimates that 89 million *non-PC* devices, including TV set up boxes, mobile assistants and screen phones will be connected and available for use by the year 2001. Members of America Online are sending over 10 million emails and downloading 5.5 million files per day. A market transformation in information usage is taking place.

This has many implications for libraries, including: rapidly developing products, a range of business models, decision making getting more difficult due to the number of choices, and on a collection level: a real opportunity to expand the collection from the library to the desktop of users, and targeted collection development and use of materials.

How are publishers going to serve their users in this environment? The trends currently indicate that the Internet is becoming the accepted delivery platform, libraries are developing their collections along these lines, primary and secondary publishers are creating front end mechanisms to deal with data, user populations are becoming more sophisticated with technology and avenues such as push technologies are being explored. With these trends in mind, Elsevier developed their Science Direct product.

Science Direct is a web-based research database for scientific literature that contains the full-text of more than 1000 Elsevier Science SGML or PDF files. The product will provide users with a solid starting point for research by providing abstracts from core journals in the major sciences. The product contains links to document delivery services which can be customized. In June, 1998, Science Direct will contain the abstracts from nearly 2500 non Elsevier journals plus nearly 100,000 Elsevier Science articles, which is expected to grow to over 200,000 articles by December. The subject coverage includes Life Sciences, Chemistry, Engineering, Medicine, Earth and Social Sciences.

For libraries, the service offers usage profiles, and consumer use increases with the ease of use. Science Direct is a licensed service, and pricing is based on a content fee, platform fee and transaction fees. Access to the system is available for both on campus and campus-wide use. Users can subscribe to a number of journals, plus also get access to access to Tables of Contents and abstracts of unsubscribed journals. Elsevier is hoping to developed transactional access to nonsubscribed journals so that users can order specific articles from journals outside of their subject area. An archive for older journals is also planned.

Pricing schemes include a platform fee, which is based on the size of the user population. Elsevier is looking to blend license and transaction models, but this is a process that is just starting. Libraries which choose this service are agreeing to a three year contract with Elsevier so that price increases will be more stable.

The downside to the service includes problems with downloading TIFF graphics: the process is very slow to download via a dialup connection (about four minutes), and images are not really coming out clear. There are also issues concerning currency: at this point in time, the current issue of a journal is being scanned 4-6 weeks after the print version is published (Elsevier has set a goal to have the print and the electronic version appear simultaneously by the end of 1998). They are also discovering that they have missing issues, and the only way they are discovering this is through libraries who are using the service and are contacting Elsevier and informing them that an issue is missing.

The upside to the service, apart from the access to a large amount of scientific research information, are that the service provides desktop access to this information for the user, and the service contains more content at less price per user.

Elsevier has done some preliminary research with the libraries that are currently using the service to determine usage patterns. They hope to share this information with subscribers. They are also monitoring the activity of subscribed and unsubscribed journals, the needs of users for current versus older material, and how users are using the search interface (they have found that 50% of users are using the browse function and 50% are using the search function).

Return to top

Conclusion

Rebecca Breedlove thanked the participants for their presentations. Many librarians who attended the forum discussed the impact that "unbundling" journals would have on the "publish or perish" mentality that pervades so many academic institutions as faculty members try to attain tenure. The program clearly demonstrated the fact that serials librarians must learn to think outside of the journal and bound volume and determine the best mix of materials to offer their users to make the most efficient use of serials information.

The members of the ACRL New England Chapter Serials Interest Group are: Rebecca Breedlove, Head of Serials, University of Massachusetts, Boston (Chair); Joseph A. Gabriel, Director of Technical Services, Gutman Library, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Alison C. Roth, Serials Specialist, Blackwell’s Periodicals, and Patricia A. Hatch, Librarian, Institute for Business & Home Safety, Boston, MA.