Colleagues,

The National Academies Library is now an Ebsco customer after being
caught up in, and severely impacted by, the Faxon bankruptcy.  Since
becoming an Ebsco customer we have not experienced the level of customer
service that I, personally, would have expected from Ebsco.  Our
library, like so many of you, is struggling to meet budgetary
constraints for our journal subscriptions while still offering a
high-value, high impact,
multi-disciplinary journals collection.

We are in the throes of our annual journals renewal process and just
completed a journal survey with our program division staff which clearly
indicated that they prefer online access to journals vs. print only and
in some cases a print + online combination.  We had hoped to use Ebsco's
Ebsconet database to determine costs for online only journal titles
however, the database has not proven to be very useful and in fact our
Research Librarian reported his frustration using Ebsconet and found
that the EBSCO Net Serials Management System extremely frustrating to
use for looking up prices, especially for online subscriptions. He
frequently found no indication that a title had online availability but
then checked our Ulrich's Online directory or would go directly to the
publishers' web site and found that there was obviously some kind of
online subscription available.  The database is not reliable for this
kind of information.

I know that discussions of subscription agents has been a topic of this
listserv but I'd like to hear from libraries who are former Faxon
customers, that perhaps like us, moved our subscriptions management to
Ebsco and what kind of service have you received and to everyone using
Ebsconet, what is your view of this subscription management tool.

You can reply directly to me and I will summarize all responses for
everyone on the list.  My thanks, in advance, to everyone.

Victoria Harriston (vharriston@nas.edu)

Victoria Harriston, MLS
Library Manager
The National Academies
George E. Brown, Jr. Library
500 5th Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
Office: (202) 334-2327
Fax: (202) 334-1651
vharriston@nas.edu
National Academies: http://www.nas.edu
George E. Brown, Jr. Library:
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/nrclibrary/index.html
"Meeting the research, advisory, and educational  needs of the advisors
to the nation on science, engineering and medicine"