Dear SERIALSTers,

Our Engineering company library is considering subscribing to a TOC
service.  Some people in the company are currently unhappy with the
timeliness of the journal routing and would like to stay abreast of more
TOCs than just those titles to which we subscribe.

Have any of you had an experience with such a service?  How did it work
out?

We've been looking into NERAC's TOC service.  They allow the end-users to
subscribe to any of the 21,000 journal titles in their database, editing
their list anytime.  We will also look into EBSCO and others (any ideas?).
Since this is new territory for us, we don't know how it will effect our
demand for photocopies (for those we subscribe to), whether it will be
cost-effective, and so forth.  Perhaps with this service we could
eventually cut down on the number of subscriptions, offsetting the cost of
the service somewhat.

Further, if we are to pitch this to management, how do we justify cost?
It's very difficult to put a price on ignorance.  Surely the demand for
information is the same whether we can provide the information or not.

Anyone with experience or information is encouraged to reply to me off the
list (or on, if you like).

Peter J. Zeimet
Systems Librarian
Barr Engineering Co.
8300 Norman Center Drive
Minneapolis, MN  55437-1026
612-832-2868
612-832-2601 fax
 <pzeimet@BARR.COM>