Questions for Emily McElroy re respondents to her e-journal services
survey:

Emily, given your approximately 50 respondents, could you give us a
breakdown as to approx. how many were from large academic libraries, how
many from small academic libraries, how many from special libraries, how
many from public libraries?  Was there any information provided as to how
many e-journal subscriptions on average each respondent's library
currently has? If you can provide such additional information from the
responses you received, it would be an aid to putting the other parts of
your summary of responses into perspective and in giving a bit more
context for those responses. If you can't, that's OK; just thought it
would be worth asking.

Thanks.
-- Gaele Gillespie / Serials Librarian / University of Kansas Libraries
<ggillespie@UKANS.EDU>

-----Original Message-----
From: Emily McElroy [mailto:emcelro@WPO.IT.LUC.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 2:17 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Summary: Survey on e-journal services

I apologize for not posting this sooner but results were still coming in
as of last week.

Overall comments:

Most people who responded (around 50 people) go directly to the
publisher's site or use Ingenta and Catchword over using a vendor's
aggregator product.  Most of the people who do use a vendor's product use
EBSCO Online and then SwetsNet. People seem very impressed with the
service of Catchword and Ingenta.

Most of the respondents felt that going direct or using another service
was more useful than going through their vendor.  Many people said that
they order their titles through more than one vendor, so it is nice not to
be tied too much to one vendor's product.  Other people found that they
were spending so much time trying to resolve problems with their vendor
that it was easier to just go through Ingenta or Catchword because of
their easy set-up process and excellent customer service.  (I do have a
question - do you think free services like Ingenta or Catchword will move
to a pay for access service?)

1.  How much time do you spend on maintenance?

Most people spend a lot of time maintaining their e-journal collections.
Initial activation was hands down the most time consuming part of ejournal
administration.  As one person said, activation is not as simple as the
vendor or publisher makes it seem.  Some libraries don't track ejournal
holdings because of the time involved.  My favorite response was "entirely
too much" since that is how I feel most days.

2.  Are you spending a lot of time troubleshooting problems?

The overall answer was yes.  It seemed to be more of an issue with people
who go through a vendor's product.  The number one issue regardless of
using an aggregator or going direct was losing access at the beginning of
the calendar year.  Some of the issues mentioned were problems with
redirect URLs, Adobe Acrobat is incompatible with a provider, and server
down-time.  No orders recorded, passwords that don't work, titles coming
and going, lack of communication, and delayed payments were some other
answers.

3.  Responsiveness of the vendor in setting up or handling problems with
the services

It was mixed.  It seemed to vary with the type of service people used.
People found the vendors to have a poor response time, especially in the
set-up process.  Others found that customer service at Ingenta or
Catchword was stellar.  At least two people stated that the vendor had not
tried the system before they offered it.

4.  Are you notified of changes to the system?

Catchword and Ingenta - yes.  Vendors - mixed.

5.  Is the information up-to-date?

Most people said that things were usually current.

6.  Strengths and Weaknesses (this applied only to vendor's services)

Strengths - table of contents are updated, index a lot of the journals
they are interested in, value of service for little or not cost, common
interface

Weaknesses - lack of response, "work too hard to fix things they should
have caught before they offered service"

7.  Would this type of service sway your decision in picking a vendor -
yes and no.  Since most people go direct or deal with services such as
Ingenta or Catchword it wouldn't make as much of a difference.  However if
they used a vendor's product it would make a difference in selecting a
vendor.

Please don't hesitate in contacting me if you have any questions about the
survey and its results.

Emily McElroy

Emily McElroy
Serials & Electronic Collections Librarian
Loyola Health Sciences Library
2160 S. First Ave.
Maywood, IL 60153
708-216-5302
<emcelro@WPO.IT.LUC.EDU>