Davette,

 

At Auburn we don’t review titles each year, we just automatically renew unless we have a cancelation project or a specific title comes to our attention, such as for an excessive price increase.  I have used the OAR, though, as part of a special project to identify those titles we should consider moving to online only, or print+online.  I noticed the canceled titles also and Ebsco explained that they keep that data in their files for a period of time, I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the reason why.  As for bad data, Ebsco only knows what the publishers tell them.  I’ve sent in several error reports over the years to Ebsco about incorrect or outdated information in their files.  Ebsco has always been quite open that they rely on customers to tell them about these errors and is appreciative when we do update the info.

 

The OAR does contain a lot of extraneous info and I delete many columns when I use it.  I never expect a third-party report to be entirely accurate or just what I need.  We order about 90% of our serials through Ebsco so I know it can’t be complete anyway.  It’s just in the nature of serials to be frustrating.  In all fairness to Ebsco (and other vendors), my own reports that I create from my own system’s data are never clean, either.  Anything I do with serials seems to require careful reviewing of the data and lots of manual editing.

 

Paula Sullenger

Head, Electronic Resources and Serials

Auburn University Libraries

231 Mell St.

Auburn University, AL 36849-5606

 

334-844-1725 phone

334-844-3148 fax

sullepa@auburn.edu

 

 

 

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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