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Current Subscribers: 396
45.1 QUERY: GORDON & BREACH INVOICING FOR JOURNALS WITH
CD-ROMS
From: Jean Shipman, Univ. of Washington <jean@u.washington.edu>
Just was wondering if you have heard from anyone about this publisher's new approach of automatically invoicing for an accompanying CD-ROM product for their serials? Thanks!
45.2 REPLY: GORDON & BREACH CD-ROM INVOICING
From: Neil White, Gordon & Breach <neil.white@gbpub.com>
[In explanation of the CD-ROM pricing policy, Neil White of G & B kindly provided the text of an explanatory letter that was sent to subscribers (although, speaking as one subscriber, I never saw it).]
Dear Subscriber,
1996 JOURNALS ON CD-ROM
Last year, we announced that the first CD-ROM for 1995 volumes of Gordon and Breach and Harwood Academic journals will be provided to subscribers at no charge. As promised, these CD's will be sent out to subscribers after completion of the 1995 print volumes. For 1996 volumes we are able to make these available to subscribers at only an extra 10% of the cost of the print subscription when included with the 1996 subscription renewals.
The CD's may contain visual information (video images and 3D renderings) that is not available in the print version. If ordered apart from the 1996 print journal, the CD is an extra 50% of the journal subscription rate. If ordered alone, with no subscription to the print journal, the CD is the same price as the regular journal subscription rate.
Our 1996 renewal to your agent, for journals on the list overleaf, includes the 1996 CD-ROM in the invoiced rate. To take advantage of this saving, you need only to renew at the invoiced journal rate. If you wish to exclude the CD-ROM from your renewal, we ask that you instruct your agent, or us, to deduct the special 10% price from your invoice.
We recognize that you have not yet had the chance to review the free 1995 CD-ROM. Therefore, if for any reason you wish to cancel your order for the 1996 CD, we will credit the 10% included in your subscription at any time prior to delivery of the 1996 CD.
We are always looking for ways to improve our accessibility to subscribers for any information required from the publishers. In addition to our Publication Schedule Hotline listed below, you may contact any one of the following individuals for prompt assistance by phone, fax, or e-mail.
Publication Schedule Hotline: USA (201) 643-7500; Dial extension 290. This number gives you dates of last and next issues publishing for each journal. Please have the ISSN of the journal ready to dial upon the voice prompt.
Key members of our service staff ready to assist you:
UK USA SINGAPORE
Karen Elton Charles Reynolds Denise Pong
Tel: 44 (0)1734 560080 215 750-2642 65 741 6933
Fax: 44 (0)1734 568211 215 750-6343 65 741 6922
karen.elton@gbpub.com
charlie.reynolds@gbpub.com
ipdsing@singnet.com.sg
[Editor's note: G & B has also recently announced a Web site for information about their publications: http://www.titlenet.com/GB]
45.3 SYMPOSIUM ON SERIALS BUDGET ANALYSIS - PART I
The eleven submissions that follow represent the first installation of responses to my query about whether and how libraries track their serials expenditures by subject. I asked about both broad analyses, e.g., clinical vs. experimental medicine titles, and narrower analyses, e.g., ophthalmology vs. orthopaedics. I also asked about how libraries categorize interdisciplinary titles.
The responses represent a wide range of approaches, although it is probably fair to say that a majority of BLABbers are still "blobbers", i.e., they do not attempt to segregate expenditures except by very broad disciplines, such as medicine vs. dentistry.
However, I think you will get a sense as you read these responses, that the day of the "one big blob" serials budget may be ending, and that at least for internal purposes (if not for public consumption), libraries are looking for ways to bring the subject distribution of their serials expenditures into sharper focus.
Part II of the symposium responses will be distributed next week. On behalf of all BLABbers I want to thank each of the contributors for their willingness to take part in this electronic discussion. Further comments on these issues are welcome.
45.4 SERIALS BUDGET ANALYSIS RESPONSES
From: Paul Wakeford, U.C. San Francisco
Yes, looks like we need to track serials since we may all be one medical school/library by 2000. You have heard about the Pew Report (a UCSF product) and the Stanford/UCSF official discussions. We have heard like rumors about you [USC] and UCLA. [Editor's note: Unsubstantiated, I think, but stranger things have happened...]
We can track by broad subject, but have not tried to consolidate broad subjects into larger groups. Guess it could be done. These are broad subjects we devised and accommodate interdisciplinary items by being broad enough or we simply choose one subject over the other. Also we our in our third year of title-specific use by title via barcode - all on our INNOPAC system. We do not budget by subject or any other factor, but cancel by low use and order or reinstate by faculty recommendations/reviews/strong instincts.
45.5 From: Dorothea Rowse, Univ. of Melbourne
<Dorothea_Rowse.UniLib@muwaye.unimelb.edu.au>
At the University of Melbourne Medical Library this is a problem with which we are wrestling. The current situation is an official blob, while I try to ensure that equity is maintained and that each area is given a fair go. We are at the stage of cancelling a title in order to place a new subscription and will have to have a hard look at the list as a whole again soon. The Faculty User Committee have in the past been opposed to splitting the budget up as they believe that usage is interdisciplinary and that some of the more expensive areas such as neuroscience will be vulnerable when cuts are required. The Australian medical libraries are actively involved in setting up some mechanism for a distributed national collection which might help in the long run. I will be interested in the answers that you receive!
45.6 From: Barbara Koehler, Johns Hopkins Univ.
<bmk@welchgate.welch.jhu.edu>
Although we do track book expenditures by subject, we have never been able to do that with journals. Our serials subsystem is home-grown and does not allow for much management information. I agree that it would be useful to know what subjects we are buying, but for now we have the big blob principle in action. Use has been the focus for cancellations regardless of subject area.
45.7 From: Cindy Cline, Univ. of Kentucky Medical
Center
<MCLCINDY@UKCC.UKY.EDU>
Our budget for serials used to be one big blob. We are now using NOTIS acquisitions. Since we now have an online system we are tracking our serials. We support 5 colleges and a hospital. Our funds are set up by specific college (medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, allied health), hospital, general, library (staff use materials). Anything representing a specific medical discipline goes into medicine. Multidisciplinary go into allied health or general. We are also tracking patient education and alternative medicine, separately. Materials are paid from whatever account applies to the requestor. We use expenditure class codes to track format of materials, (approval, continuations, firm orders, serials, etc.)
45.8 From: Kimberly J. Laird, East Tennessee State
<LAIRDK@MEDSERV.EAST-TENN-ST.EDU>
As for our subject classification... we hope to use EBSCO's reports to gain that information. We know what departments have requested which journals, but have yet to generate reports based on costs for each department. I would like to do that & plan on doing so with EBSCO's help.
The Sherrod Library here does a manual count/recordkeeping of all monies spent for each department (37) & reports it. It is a very laborious process & one we don't want to duplicate. Sherrod library is the undergraduate/graduate library.
45.9 From: Brian Furner, London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine
<B.FURNER@lshtm.ac.uk>
For some years now we have used a dBase program in which we store details of current subscriptions. Each title is given a subject classification taken from the Barnard scheme which was invented in this library and serves us well! We can interrogate the database at the dot prompt to answer these types of enquiries -- not that we do very often.
Each title can also crudely be assigned to one of 4 basic `groups' - general medical; clinical sciences; lab sciences; and public health (including social sciences). This reflects the broad divisions of our academic departments.
Such data if published are always put in the context of general periodical prices. We use the Blackwells index to prices published each year in the Library Association Record. This shows that, to buy one journal (at average prices) in each of these 4 areas gives the following price ratios:
general medical 11%
clinical sciences 19%
lab sciences 61%
public health 9%
Thus, as a school of public health, we should show a significantly higher proportion than 9% in our expenditure on periodicals (actually its about 34%).
Departments/units could start to argue that their success in attracting research grants, or in attracting more students, should be reflected (rewarded?) in the proportion of library expenditure in their field? Does this happen?
45.10 From: Lorraine Lanning, Univ. of Colorado
<Lorraine.Lanning@UCHSC.edu>
Just one bib blob for us. Your request does raise the question of whether we SHOULD be tracking journals by subject as we do books, av's, etc. I'll be interested to read the responses.
45.11 From: J. Pat Craig, Louisiana State U. Medical
Center
<jcraig@mail-sh.lsumc.edu>
In response to your questions regarding acquisitions budgets, here are my answers from Shreveport (LSU Medical Center). It is very interesting that this subject should come up just now. Last week I reported much of this same material to the Elected Faculty Council and to the Dean's Administrative Council.
We do track what is spent by broad subject areas. We use the EXCEL spreadsheet software. We track by department. It is very helpful when a department wants to add NEW journals that they cannot live without. It is quite helpful to show them that they are already getting __?__% of the money for journals.
This can also be helpful when the time to cut comes. You can more readily target some of the large %budget sections and allow those departments with much smaller %ages to keep titles.
[To designate subject categories] we have used the first subject heading assigned by NLM. [For interdisciplinary titles] we have taken the lazy approach and used the first subject heading given by NLM. It may not be the best approach, but when you are dealing with this type of material (Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology is a certifiable nutcase), it helps sometimes to have the 'authority weight' of NLM behind you, especially when you are facing angry faculty demanding to know on what subject expertise are your basing your decisions.
As an aside, it would be nice to know how faculty respond to journal cuts at other institutions. Do most faculty members mistakenly direct their anger, frustration, etc., at the library, rather than administration?
We have purposely not kept [the serials budget] as a "blob" because we have wanted to know what is going into each area. This has been valuable to us when we know that a particularly 'hot' researcher is leaving and taking his/her, faculty, and grant with him/her. We can easily cut those journals that were purchased to support his/her area of research interest. Sometimes these journals are the most 'pricey' ones in the collection, because they are so narrowly focused.
45.12 From: Toni Prelec, SUNY Stony Brook
<APRELEC@HSCLIB.hsc.sunysb.edu>
We don't subdivide serials budget by subject;it's one serial budget for 5 schools.
45.13 From: Lenny Rhine, Univ. Florida
<LENNY@library.health.ufl.edu>
We use NLM's broad classification scheme. The biggest limit is that many of the titles are interdisciplinary and don't fit into a specific category. I'd conclude that this gives us some general guidelines but not the precise information we'd all like. We need a complicated and weighted matrix to define what disciplines use each title.
While the info is useful, I'm glad we don't assign specific journal funds to each category. When we did a journal evaluation study last year, I had difficulty sending the exact list of journals to various faculty departments. Too many of the titles are interdisciplinary.
45.14 From Arta Dobbs, Univ. of Connecticut Health
Center
<Dobbs@NSO.UCHC.EDU>
Here at the University of Connecticut Health Center - L.M. Stowe Library , the serials budget is a "blob" . This is one project I would love to tackle, as we serve not only a medical school, but a dental school and a school of public health, and some small phd programs in the biomedical sciences. As we come into the next round of cancellations for next year (of that I am certain, unless the dollar strengthens significantly in the next year), I think it will be important to let faculty know what areas are supported strongly as well as weakly, in both quantity of titles as well a $ spent.
Look forward to your summary of responses from other schools.
[Part II of the symposium responses will appear in the next issue.]
45.15 NOTICE: CONCISE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FOODS & NUTRITION
From: Pamela Rose, University at Buffalo <hslmela@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu>
A recent CRC Press publication entitled _The Concise Encyclopedia of Foods & Nutrition_ appears almost identical to an earlier CRC publication_Foods & Nutrition Encyclopedia_ 2nd ed. 2 v. set published in 1994,just an abbreviated edition. Authors are the same for both titles. A browse through several entries revealed almost identical text, with little change. The _Concise..._ volume price is $125.95 with a 1995 imprint. The earlier title was $350.00 in 1994.
45.16 NOTICE: CONNECTIVE TISSUE RESEARCH
From: Jim Shedlock, Northwestern Univ.
<shedlock@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
I am writing with information re: the publication schedule of Connective Tissue Research (CTR). This notice was prompted by an article in the newsletter of the Briscoe Library-U Texas at San Antonio. The UT article was concerned about the long delay in this title's publication schedule. Since the editor of CTR, Dr. Arthur Veis, is here at Northwestern, I sent him the copy from the Briscoe Library, and he sent me the following explanation.
CTR is publishing the proceedings of a conference held in Holland in 1994. At Dr. Veis' insistence, each paper had to be reviewed before publication. Because of the size of the proceedings, these papers became V32/1-4 and V33/1-3. However, V31 was not completed; issues 1 and 2 had been published and 3 and 4 are in production with 3 completed and 4 in the last stages with all papers at the printer. V33/4 will pick up the regular publication schedule. In 1996, production will be on schedule with V34.
Dr. Veis has suggested that the publisher send an explanatory notice to subscribers.
"We are actually getting better and better papers and have a bigger backlog. In addition, we are going to publish another 'proceedings ' of refereed papers in 1996 and another in 1997. We are restricting ourselves to publishing only the most crucial and state of the art conferences, at one per year. In the regular issues, we also have initiated short review articles. The first of these will be in V31/3...."
45.17 NOTICE: DENTOFACIAL DEFORMITIES
From: Anne Carroll Bunting, Univ. Tennessee, Memphis <bunting@utmem1.utmem.edu>
We have purchased a book: Dentofacial deformities: integrated orthodontic and surgical correction / Bruce N.Epker. 2d ed. Mosby, 1994. The OCLC record #31489080 Shows this as an open entry 1994- with this book being v.1. The cover of the book also shows v.1. I called Majors to find out when to expect v.2. My rep. Nancy Vance called Mosby and they told her that there would be no v.2. The next vol to come out will be the 3rd ed.
I thought some other libraries might like to know this. I wonder why Mosby put vol. 1 on the book?
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BLAB is published more or less monthly, and includes items of news and opinion
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