----------(1)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 10:05:56 -0400
From: Steve Black <blacks@MAIL.STROSE.EDU>
Subject: Re: EBSCO's Statement (Aurora Ioanid)

Sam Brooks of EBSCO made the same points, supported by additional factual
detail, in a presentation at an Eastern New York chapter of ACRL conference
last Fall.  I was happy to see that his e-mail was consistent with his
conference presentation.

For those who didn't see the message, one piece of it says "Full text
databases are here to stay, but the favorable ratio of content and access
may not be. . . .[aggregated] Databases should be seen as a complement (not
a replacement) to print and electronic journal collections".  The detail Mr.
Brooks offered at the conference included an account of the struggle EBSCO
has with keeping publishers on board.

What follows is my interpretation of Mr. Brooks' words:  Currently, a
publisher gets much less income per subscriber from a full-text license than
they receive from a print subscription.  If libraries cancel print en masse
because they see online packages as viable substitutes, publishers will
either 1) stop providing content to full-text providers or 2) demand much
higher payment for full-text content.  The bottom line is that none of us
should consider titles in a package like EBSCOhost Academic Search (or any
other full-text package) as direct substitutes for print subscriptions.

Finally, I'd like to add that it seems to me EBSCO is doing as good a job as
any of the aggregators of keeping publishers on board.  I think we should
appreciate Mr. Brooks' candor, and realize that what he's saying applies to
all the full-text vendors, whether they're willing to say it in public or
not.

Steve Black
Reference, Instruction, and Serials Librarian
Neil Hellman Library
The College of Saint Rose
392 Western Ave.
Albany, NY 12203
(518) 458-5494
blacks@mail.strose.edu

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 11:54:42 -0400
> From: Aurora Ioanid <aioanid@MONMOUTH.EDU>
> Subject: EBSCO's Statement
>
> Hi all,
>
> I apologized if this has already been discussed, but I would like to ask
> if there are/were any comments about EBSCO's e-mail: "Attn: Academic
> Librarians", on March 19, 2001. It seems that there are a lot of
> implications about collection development issues, cataloging and
> integrity of serial collections. Beyond what I thought I already knew
> apropos of online journals...
> Could someone please direct me to serials-related publications which
> discuss these publisher/trade/aggregators/e-journal issues?
>
> Aurora Ioanid
> Bibliographic Control
> Guggenheim Library
> Monmouth University, NJ

----------(2)
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 10:55:29 -0400
From: Pat Newland <patnew@CSONLINE.NET>
Subject: Re: EBSCO's Statement (Aurora Ioanid)

Hi,

This has been discussed at length on Liblicense-l lately. You can find
its archives and a lot of other information at:

http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/index.shtml

Pat Newland
Clarion University of Pennsylvania