Hi,

To Victoria and other Ebsco customers changing from print to online:

Looking up every title in Ebsconet would indeed be a big job. Under
"Reports" select "Online Availability" and you will get a report of all
your print titles that Ebsco also sells as print + online and/or online
only.  Some will not have prices because you have to negotiate directly
with the publisher to get one (e.g. Elsevier deals with different
libraries on different terms). Anyway, if you do this first, then check
just your remaining titles in Ulrich's for online versions that Ebsconet
does not show, it'll go much faster.

Also, I suggest you e-mail MCoombs@Ebsco.com about your preference for
online. She has prepared spreadsheets for me with prices for various
publishers when they have changed their online terms.  If you tell her
your requirements -- like do you want IP recognition only or is
passworded online ok -- she can be very helpful.

As for Ebsco service compared with Faxon, yes, I missed some features
when I left Faxon for Ebsco in 1994, but overall, Ebsco fulfillment has
been good, and that's number one for my library. We do get what we pay
for.

Good luck,

Judith E. Stokes, Serials Librarian
Adams Library, Rhode Island College
600 Mt. Pleasant Avenue
Providence, RI 02908
(401)456-8165
JStokes@RIC.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Harriston, Victoria
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 8:43 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Your Ebsco Service and Ebsconet

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"