We use Ebsco as our journal vender. We use the reports from Ebsconet system for the renewal every year. It is easy to work on the subscription list after trained by Ebsco.  

It is supposed to list all our subscribed titles for each account there. But the lists always exclude some titles, because those titles may appear late as our subscriptions after we paid the total for Ebsco, which annoys me very much especially when those previously canceled titles appeared late.

As for the print and online, I have to work carefully on that since we prefer online only. And both print and online are mixed together in the list as titles are in alphabetical order, which I prefer.  After I finished working on Ebsconet, I usually download to my Excel file, and then I can make separate files for the print only and online only lists.

For many years I have been ordering the Online Availability Report (OAR) through EBSCO to help our collection development librarians make renewal decisions for the following year.  They use this report to decide what journal titles to renew, cancel, and switch from print to online.  This report is supposed to tell us what we currently have on order through EBSCO and is divided into 3 sections:  1) our print titles, 2) our print + online titles, 3) our online only titles.

Year after year I have seen “bad data” in this report.  For example, many titles that we have already cancelled appear on this report.  Also, titles that we switched to online sometimes appear in the “print” section.  In addition, I cannot customize this report when I order it.  As a result, dozens of columns that are not needed get downloaded into the spreadsheet.  I have reported these issues to EBSCO.

Cleaning up this report for our selectors is very laborious and time consuming.  I would like to ask the serials community the following:

·        If EBSCO is your vendor, do your selectors use the OAR or a different report/tool for their annual renewal decisions?

·        If EBSCO is not your vendor, who is, and how does that vendor help with this process?

·        Does the method you use indicate whether or not a print journal has an online alternative?

·        Are you aware of any good tools or methods that aid selectors in deciding what journal subscriptions to renew, cancel, or switch to online?

Thank you,

Davette Zinik

Auraria Library

Acquisitions & Serials Manager

1100 Lawrence Street

Denver, Colorado 80204

303-556-2625 (tel)

303-556-2623 (fax)

davette.zinik@ucdenver.edu

Serving the University of Colorado Denver; Metropolitan State College of Denver; Community College of Denver. 

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