I'm looking for participants to discuss issues around the current trend
of canceling paper and continuing with online subscriptions through
commercial vendors, ie, Heinonline.

Do you have any thoughts on this trend? Are you concerned with longevity
of online subscriptions? Preservation issues of online journals?

A lack of physical ownership? The value of your physical collection as
it becomes less current?

Increase in cost for web content? Web content or smaller vendors being
bought by conglomerates?

The lack of contractual commitments to allow access to digital content (
for as long as a journal would exist in paper)?

Law schools are quietly putting their eggs into one basket, Hein online,
without any reassurance. Why haven't they had the same trust in West?
Wouldn't the library community be skeptical if librarians started to
discard material because it was on Westlaw or Lexis? How vulnerable is
Hein to buy out by West?

Can anything legal be done to allow first bid to AALL or an association
before being sold to a conglomerate like West? Could associations
negotiate bids for content if vendors went out of business?

Are there library agreements within a state to house paper copies? So
that atleast one paper copy is available? How similar is this to the
preservation of government documents? Except that at least there are
regional libraries that are supposed to house a comprehensive paper
collection.

How will libraries be perceived in the future that can afford to retain
paper journals and maintain an electronic presence? Will they become
more influential, as between a Harvard Law School, with space and money,
and an all electronic library, with limited space and money?

Does an increasingly electronic presence further divide those who have
and have not?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and if you are interested in being apart
of a roundtable discussion or speaker or can suggest someone for NASIG
2010.

Thanks.

Michele Pope
Serials/Government Documents Librarian
Loyola University Law Library
7214 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70118
(504) 861-5546
Fax: (504) 861-5895
mpope@loyno.edu