Serials folks:
  I am forwarding the attached message to get input from others suffering
from the same problem we are.  In a nutshell: journal publishers who are
offering online access to their publications for people who subscribe are
NOT allowing access to institutons (such as us) who subscribe through a
vendor.
  How are others dealing with this as your patrons demand online access?
-- Mitch
  _^_                                                 _^_
( ___ )-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-( ___ )
 |   |                                               |   |
 |   |     Mitch Turitz, Serials Librarian           |   |
 |   |     San Francisco State University Library    |   |
 |   |     Internet: turitz@sfsu.edu                 |   |
 |   |     http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~turitz           |   |
 |   |                                               |   |
( ___ )-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-==-( ___ )
   V                                                   V
      "I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather ...
 ... Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car."

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 17:16:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: "C. Stuart Hall" <cshall@sfsu.edu>
Subject: Internet journal access

Finally the explanation for our bafflement has emerged.  I don't like it
much and I expect you won't either, but what I've learned is that the
journal publishers who are offering free electronic access to their
journals for anyone who subscribes are making the offer for *individual*
subscribers.  Some of them want a single IP address--which we can't offer,
since our IP addresses are too diverse, and if we truncate sufficiently to
include them all, we're also including non-campus people.  Some of them
want a subscriber number.  But the piece I just learned is that they won't
accept a vendor's subscriber number.  Since almost all our subscriptions
are ordered through a vendor, we don't have the number they require for
access.  We can't switch those subscriptions from vendor to
publisher-direct without (a) increasing workload and (b) reducing discounts.

If I hear of or figure out any way of getting access to these sources,
you'll certainly hear from me.  Meanwhile, the library's full-text access
is growing a bit (through AP Ideal, EbscoHost, and Project Muse), and the
CARL SUMO project allows ordering full-text for next-day delivery--not
like online access, but at least better than anything we had a couple of
years ago.

                                        --Stuart

        C. Stuart Hall
        San Francisco State University
        (415)338-6394
        cshall@sfsu.edu