College Science Librarians Discussion Group   [Conference Report]

  	
  	
  	
  


	Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship  	Summer 1997  


	DOI:10.5062/F4P55KG7


    

Conference Reports
  ACRL College Science Librarians Discussion Group
  
Helena F. Warburg
  Williams College  
            The College Science Librarian's discussion group topic, "Ownership  vs. Access" attracted record numbers.  This year's discussion group included  several university librarians and a few vendors for on-line information.            Alexa Jaffurs, Science Librarian from Amherst College, talked about  Amherst College's experiences with full-text journals.  Amherst does not  mount any full-text journals locally although they participate in Project  MUSE and will be signing with IDEAL in the near future.  Decisions to own or  to rely on remote access are based on availability and user demand.  Amherst is a member of a  five college consortium that is moving from SilverPlatter to OVID.  The five  college consortium will mount databases locally to increase speed and  access. All of Amherst's electronic resources are cataloged, and with the  addition of WEBCAT and access to links, use of electronic journals is  expected to increase.  At the present time, access to full-text journals is  not cheaper than subscribing to the paper version.  It would be more prudent  to fund tables of contents services, although Elsevier and FAXON are  worth investigating.

            Raye-Lynn Thomas, Associate Librarian from Sonoma State University,  discussed the consortium that exists for California State Universities.  The  University has a computer access requirement for its students, and the  library tries to promote as much remote access as possible to information  resources.  There is a California State University consortium that meets  quarterly.  Month-long trials are arranged for electronic resources. Some  of these resources are available to the community at large to test while  others are previewed by a select group of users.  There is a special section  for trial subscriptions on the library homepage.  Sonoma State is reviewing  IDEAL and may subscribe next year.  They currently offer an "electronic  collection" that includes Dow Jones, LEXIS, Brittanca, and U.S.A.  Statistics.  An electronic core collection of full-text journals is being  considered but is currently only in the embryonic stage.  Sonoma State  recently added the JSTOR journals to their collection.  To promote  full-text journals, they put up a display in front of the library for all  the full-text journals to which they subscribe.  

            Charles Meyers, acting Library Director from Franklin & Marshall  College, stated that his library belongs to several different consortia and  that everyone seems to be doing similiar things.  He compared consortia to  the stock market and said that institutions have much more bargaining power  in groups.  EBSCO is one vendor that appears very willing to negotiate.  Mr. Meyers  doesn't believe that electronic full-text journals are all they are cracked  up to be.  What about the good paper collections that are already in place?  Students do not discriminate among on-line sources.  As long as it's  electronic, they think it's great.  Faculty aren't as enthusiastic as we  think.  Most of them are tired of change and prefer journals in paper  format.  Small schools should let big schools who have the funding make the  mistakes.  Mr. Meyers wonders which institution will drop project MUSE first?!

            Major questions which remain unresolved were: who will provide  the archival copies of journals, how much will they cost, and is electronic access  going to cost us more in the long term than subscriptions to journals in paper format?

            Anyone with comments about this years program or topic suggestions  for 1998 Science Librarian's Discussion Group should contact Helena Warburg,  Science Librarian, Williams College,  Williamstown,  Massachusetts (hwarburg@williams.edu)