You WILL hear from your patrons about the articles in the issues you Did Not receive.  In STM titles, it is 'almost catastrophic' for your patron, that the particular issue was not received and you did nothing about it. On this point I agree with Fred although will stipulate only for those titles that are being kept in the collection.r mission.  (Time, Newsweek for us are not kept)

 

Yes, online subscriptions will help solve this problem of the missing print issues, however there are problems there as well.   

 

Most of the 'major publishers' have reliable connectivity, (although there are some where I am still concerned)

Until, 2009, I was not comfortable with Wiley, so we had all of our subscriptions in print. It seems that they took some of the best parts from Blackwell and I seen significant improvement & now feel more confident converting to Electronic Subscriptions.  For 2010, we moved almost half of those titles and for 2011 will most likely move the remainder to E only.

 

Some publishers continue to lose, then find, then lose again our current subscriptions and cut off access. I have a publisher in mind.  Recently they have split their STM titles to a separate platform and recently announced working with a known software company to revamp their platforms.  I will wait to see what happens.  Then there are many small  & society publishers with some still not having a full text electronic equivalent.

 

As for pricing, still every possibility is there.  For some, Print only or E only are the same price, for others E is lower than print, and for at least 1 publisher (Wolters Kluwer) E only is More than Print only.  With everyone scrambling for pennies, print only is the viable option (unless important people say otherwise to specific titles).

 

Just had to handle a long phone call and have lost my thoughtstring.  Best leave it here.

 

With Best Regards,

 

 

 

John Lucas

Serials Librarian
University of Mississippi Medical Center
2500 North State St
Jackson, MS 39216-4505

(PH) (601) 984-1277
(FAX)  (601) 815-4569
JLUCAS@ROWLAND.UMSMED.EDU

>>> Rick Anderson <rick.anderson@UTAH.EDU> 1/19/2010 3:19 PM >>>
> Of course, there is a corollary that we are all dancing around here.  If a
> particular print title is no longer of enough value that you care if it came
> in or not, why are you still subscribing?

Very good question -- and I think the answer is that it's possible for a
subscription to be worth the price of subscribing, but not worth the cost of
close manual control.  Remember that when you subscribe to a journal or
magazine, most of the issues are going to arrive without any problem most of
the time.

--
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library
Univ. of Utah
rick.anderson@utah.edu
(801) 721-1687