Diane Westerfield wrote:

One thing to try: download your MyRenewals or Current Subscriptions  report, sort by publisher, and identify scholarly publishers who are publishing a lot of the titles you subscribe to.  Then look at the policies for the big guys and see if canceling print is advisable.  This is the low-hanging fruit and you can efficiently deal with a lot of titles together.

 

If you try this, I would suggest using the Summary of Publications report rather than the Current Subscriptions report.  Current Subscriptions “lists all titles with an expiration date on or after the date of the report's request” (from EbscoNet). Summary of Publications report is a “complete list of titles currently on order”(from EbscoNet). I have had more success with the Summary of Publications report.

 

Sally

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Sarah (Sally) Glasser

Serials/Electronic Resources Librarian

022B Axinn Library

123 Hofstra University

Hempstead, NY  11549

 

Tel: 516-463-5959

 

 

 

 

Greetings from CC, down the road from Denver.  We also have EBSCO as our subscription agent.

 

I’ve never use the OAR report in EBSCO; I’ve been using a different approach.  I have identified publishers that offer perpetual access (and hope to get a signed license to that effect), and/or have their journal titles in Portico to which we subscribe.  As titles are added to these publishers I ask the subject liaisons if it’s OK to switch from print to online only.  The big exception is art, where we maintain print subscriptions.

 

So for instance, we have gone online only with Taylor & Francis titles, and we canceled some print titles in EBSCO while getting them online-only in JSTOR Current Scholarship.  This is in addition to cancelling print for titles in our online journal packages that guarantee perpetual access. 

 

What I’m doing entails maintaining some awareness of publishers and journal transfers. I guess I don’t have the most comprehensive method, and obviously we have a smaller number of subscriptions in EBSCO than you guys, but it seems to be working OK so far.

 

One thing to try: download your MyRenewals or Current Subscriptions report, sort by publisher, and identify scholarly publishers who are publishing a lot of the titles you subscribe to.  Then look at the policies for the big guys and see if canceling print is advisable.  This is the low-hanging fruit and you can efficiently deal with a lot of titles together.

 

“Bad data” where EBSCO sometimes duplicates or includes canceled titles: try sorting on those columns where you might identify a zero dollar amount or similar. You can also use conditional formatting to highlight duplicate values and then sort by highlighted cells, and thus more easily rid yourself of the problem lines.  Excess columns are pretty easy to delete.

 

You might want to talk to Betsy Gardiner at EBSCO about trying to get the OAR report customizable.  Her email is bgardiner@ebsco.com .

 

Hope this helps,

 

Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian

Tutt Library, Colorado College

diane.westerfield@coloradocollege.edu

(719) 389-6661

(719) 389-6082 (fax)

 

 

 

 

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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