Number 52 July 24, 1996

Edited by David Morse (University of Southern California) dmorse@hsc.usc.edu

Editorial Board members:

Email address for all correspondence and subscriptions: dmorse@hsc.usc.edu

WEB Edition Published at Duke University:
HTML coding by Eric Albright, maldacht@duke.edu
Masthead design by Dan Barkey, d-barkey@nwu.edu

About BLAB

CONTENTS

52.1 Notice: Author Fees in Electronic Journals - Mark Funk

52.2 Notice: U.C. Principles for Acquiring Digital Formats - Bill Maina

52.3 Follow-up: Dropping Print Subscriptions to Online Indexes - Florence Schreibstein

52.4 Review: Biologic Variation in Health and Illness - Melanie Wilson

52.5 Query: Use Data for Electronic Resources - Beth Weil

52.6 Query: Collection Development Tools in Integrated Library Systems -- Mark Funk

52.7 Query: Copyright Guidelines - Diana Zinnato

From the Editor:

I hope you're all having a great summer. Mine has been a trifle busy so far, which is why I'm late with this issue.

I hope you will take a look at the Queries posted in this issue, and send me your thoughts on some of them for the next issue. I'm especially intrigued by Mark Funk's question about building some collection development tools into integrated library systems.

Which reminds me to tell you that there will be a contributed paper session in Seattle on the new generation of integrated library systems, co-sponsored by the Collection Development Section and the Technical Services Section. We're hoping that the papers will represent a good mix of collection developers and technical services types, all focusing on how we can exploit some of the new functionality in ILS products. Please, please, please submit an abstract when you see the call for papers in MLA News.

Also, don't forget that the deadline for nominations for the Louise Darling Medal for Achievement in Collection Development comes up real fast. Look for the details in MLA News.

All for now ... off the lake to see if there are any really naive trout left.

DAVID

52.1 NOTICE: AUTHOR FEES IN ELECTRONIC JOURNALS

From: Mark Funk, Cornell Medical Library (mefunk@med.cornell.edu)

I just ran across notification of a new e-journal, called "Neuroscience-Net." It is a general interest neuroscience journal, published only in electronic format, over the Web. The publisher is not familiar to me (Scientific Design and Information, Inc.) This is a peer reviewed journal (impressive list of section editors), with a two week turnaround from acceptance to publication.

So what's new about this, you ask? Well, to subscribe to the journal is absolutely free. However, upon acceptance of an article, authors must submit a $650 electronic reprint fee. This charge is to cover the "cost of storage and transfer of the published article...to readers around the world." If it wasn't for the list of editors, I'd swear this was a "e-vanity press." Is this the future? Or just an aberration? Check it out at:

http://www.neuroscience.com/

52.2 NOTICE: "PRINICPLES FOR ACQUIRING...DIGITAL FORMATS"

Forwarded by : Bill Maina, UT Southwestern Medical Center (maina@medcat.library.swmed.edu)

[Editors Note: Bill Maina has forwarded a copy of the University of California document: Principles for Acquiring and Licensing Information in Digital Formats. It provides a good starting point for the current discussion on digital information licensing as well as on the broader collection development issues posed by digital information.]

The following list of principles is provided to guide the University and its employees (at both campus and systemwide levels) in developing and reviewing proposals to/from, and in negotiating contracts with, providers of information in digital formats. UC librarians recognize that many of the issues addressed in this document are not yet fully defined or understood in the emerging digital age. Accordingly, UC offers this position as a starting point in a process that will require much discussion, experimentation and collaboration before it is complete.

1) COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

a. Conventional collection development criteria should be paramount and should be applied consistently across formats including digital resources.

b. Principal considerations include (1) establishing a coherent rationale for the acquisition of each resource; (2) meeting faculty and student information needs, providing orderly access and guidance to the digital resources, and integrating them into library service programs; and (3) ensuring that the advantages of the digital resource are significant enough to justify its selection in digital format.

c. Balance must be maintained among:

--disciplines;

--information formats (i.e., printed, a.v. and electronic media have different but equally essential purposes and audiences);

--instructional and research tools;

--different needs of each campus.

d. Priority should be given to digital format acquisition of those resources which offer economies of scale by benefiting the most faculty and students (locally and/or systemwide).

e. Priority should be given to digital resources when they offer significant added value over print equivalents in such ways as:

--more timely availability;

--more extensive content;

--greater functionality such as the ability to invoke linkages to local and/or related resources

--greater access because they can be delivered rapidly, remotely, at any time;

--improved resource sharing due to the ubiquity of digital resources;

--ease of archiving, replacing, preserving.

f. UC should retain authority for selecting and deselecting materials (content and format) and sound selection decisions should not be compromised by provider-defined linkages between print and digital products.

g. A digital collection must contain a sufficient "critical mass" to evaluate its utility and to justify its selection.

2) COSTS & PRICING

a. Electronic content should cost less than its print analog, unless there is substantial added value (e.g., Britannica Online; or a bibliographic database enhanced with full text). Publishers should be discouraged from increasing prices to amortize conversion costs over short timeframes. When multiple formats are available, UC should pay only one price for the use of all.

b. For reasons given in 1f, electronic and print costs should be separated. UC should not be required to purchase both print and its digital equivalent.

c. Content and access costs should be separated. UC should have flexibility in selecting appropriate access mechanisms (including local or remote server, resource sharing agreements with other institutions, etc.) and should be able to alter these agreements for an existing license, subject only to access and use restrictions in the license agreement. The information provider should inform UC how much of the total cost is attributable to (1) licensing the content, and (2) providing access.

d. Information providers should be expected to demonstrate that they are assuming a major share of the risk in developing and marketing new products. UC, as an early participant and partner in piloting products prior to general release, is making a considerable investment in infrastructure, delivery mechanisms, training and support; the information provider's pricing should recognize this contribution.

e. The purchasing power of UC's collections budget is declining; information providers should recognize this reality and track their inflationary price increases to the U.S. Consumer Price Index.

f. UC prefers pricing based on the size of the actual community which will use the digital information, or the actual recorded use (either unlimited simultaneous use or transaction-based licensing, as appropriate) , as opposed to pricing based on the size of the total UC population.

3) LICENSING

a. The license should include permanent rights to information that has been paid for, in the event that a licensed database is subsequently canceled or removed.

b. Information providers should employ a standard agreement that describes the rights of libraries and their authorized users in terms that are readable and explicit, and they should reflect realistic expectations concerning UC's ability to monitor use and discover abuse. Agreements should contain consistent business and legal provisions, including, for example, indemnification against third-party copyright infringement liability and permission to use records in personal bibliographic systems.

c. As a public institution with a broad mandate to serve the State of California, UC's "authorized users" include faculty, staff, students and all on-site users of the campus or University, and UC's "site" includes every campus location, physically and virtually, and the Office of the President, UC-affiliated hospitals, and any location where authorized UC faculty, staff and students might be at home and abroad. "Users" may include others directly served by UC (e.g., UC-managed laboratories and other research and instructional facilities and programs, K-12 teachers, and outreach programs).

d. The licensed content, plus any associated features and capabilities, should be accessible from all institutionally-supported computing platforms and networked environments; this access must be based on current standards (e.g., Z39.50 compliant in 1996) in use by the library community.

e. Licenses should permit "fair use" of all information for non- commercial educational, instructional and research purposes by authorized users, including unlimited viewing, downloading and printing.

f. Information providers should be able to link their access control mechanisms to UC's authentication infrastructure; access to their products should not require individual passwords and/or user IDs.

g. Licenses should not limit UC's rights to enhance or reformat data (if content integrity is preserved) to make it more visible or convenient for UC users (e.g., by providing links to other UC holdings, or annotation for use within the UC community).

h. UC use data should be available to UC as part of contractual provisions for a license and the confidentiality of individual users and their searches must be fully protected. Use data generated by UC may be available to the information provider.

4) FUNCTIONALITY

a. Data formats should follow industry standards and must be fully documented. Data should be platform-independent and available in a multiplicity of formats (e.g., ASCII, PDF, SGML, etc.)

b. UC must be able to provide access from convenient workstations connected to a network infrastructure which is reasonably fast. System capacity and bandwidth should be adequate to provide response time favorably comparable to that of existing MELVYL system databases.

c. Interfaces should be easy to master by ordinary users

d. Information providers must keep UC informed of format and content changes and coordinate their implementation with UC.

5) ARCHIVING

a. As research institutions, UC and its libraries have a legitimate interest in maintaining archives and a mission to ensure archival access.

b. Agreements should clearly state archival responsibility.

c. Agreements should permit UC to make/obtain digital and/or printed copies of content for archiving and for use in perpetuity.

Comments and suggestions are welcome and should be addressed to the Collection Development Committee c/o David Farrell, Chair: dfarrell@library.berkeley.edu; (510) 642-3773.

52.3 FOLLOW-UP : DROPPING PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS TO ONLINE INDEXES

From: Florence Schreibstein, Albert Einstein Medical College (schreibs@aecom.yu.edu)

Yes, we have dropped subscriptions to paper indexes in the last 5 years: Biological Abstracts (all sections), Dental Abstracts, Index Medicus (first from 2 copies to 1; then the one copy), Cumulative Index Medicus (2 copies to 1)

We would like to [cancel] Chemical Abstracts but hear complaints. Also our paper subscription allows for the highly reduced access charge for one of our depts. Every year we talk about dropping it but not yet. It's not easy for us to determine usage but my personal opinion is that we would save quite a bit by canceling the paper sub. We could do a lot of online searches for less than the $16,000 subscription though the problem is that searches would have to be mediated and during the day. We are looking into canceling other abstracting and indexing tools for 1997 but they are no where near the cost of Chemical Abstracts.

We dropped monthly Index Medicus but not the Cumulative. It's our psychological and real backup. There's no big savings by cancelling the Cumulative.

We had one complaint when we switched to Science Citation Index floppy rather than the print version. There was a frequency change from bimonthly to quarterly and learning curve.

52.4 BOOK REVIEW: BIOLOGIC VARIATION IN HEALTH AND ILLNESS (CRC PRESS)

From: Melanie Wilson, U. Iowa (melanie-wilson@uiowa.edu)

I am forwarding a review authored by one of our Reference Assistants here, Paul Dahl.

[Edited for length -- The Editor]

Theresa Overfield, a Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah and a Professor Emeritus in the College of Nursing at Brigham Young University, has drawn together the scientific data regarding biologic variations between racial groups, age-specific characteristics, and physical differences among men and women. This is done without couching the discussion in terms of the discriminatory separation of individuals and groups into superior/inferior camps.

The intended audience for this book consists of health care professionals, epidemiologists, physical and medical anthropologists, human biologists, other researchers in the health field, and students in these fields. This book is also likely to see use by reference departments as health care professionals become more cognizant of such information and its impact on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of illness. The book is a handy source to have in answering ready reference questions and in directing individuals to more in-depth source materials. The focus of each chapter is as follows:

Chapter One - Biologic Variation Introduced

Provides a definitional framework of biologic variation and overviews of human genetics and population genetics.

Chapter Two - Surface Variations and Anatomic Differences

Presents information on visible physical differences and internal anatomical variations among the differing racial groups.

Chapter Three - Developmental Variations in Childhood

Examines racial differences in growth and development of children and their probable origins

Chapter Four - Developmental Variations in Adulthood

Focuses on the developmental variations among adults and reveals the unique effects of aging on racial groups and between sexes.

Chapter Five - Biochemical Variation and Differential Disease Susceptibility

Provides drug reaction differences, or internal biochemical metabolic rates, among racial groups. Racial variations in the rate of infection and basic susceptibility are also part and parcel of this chapter.

Chapter Six - Environmentally Related Variation

The effects that environmental stressors--climate, altitude, and diet--have on racial groups serves as the primary focus of this chapter.

Chapter Seven - Sexual [Gender] Variation

The less known, and infrequently studied, differences in brain characteristics, life expectancy, physical strength and performance, and reactions to stress, between the sexes.

Some potential reference questions that could be answered from this work are:

What medical conditions show sexual variation? Which sex has a larger brain?

Are their differences in health care and hospital utilization between men and women?

Does the prevalence of moles depend upon on skin color? Do the number of moles increase with age?

Is there any difference between the weight of Black and White newbornsand are there any physical causes?

Are there any differences in body proportions among racial groups? What racial group has the highest rates of gallbladder disease in the United States?

What are the clinical differences in hypertension and biochemical features between Black and Whites?

One of the great strengths of the book resides in the abundant number of references provided at the end of each chapter. These references are very helpful to patrons seeking additional source material on a particular topic, and may even be useful in detailed reference consultations initiated by users.

Even though the book has many useful applications, one major flaw needs correction in order to facilitate access to its informational contents. The index would be much improved with the addition of subheadings under certain index terms listed ("American Indian", "Oriental", etc.) to provide more effective access to specific information.

Paul Dahl, Reference Assistant
Hardin Library
University of Iowa

52.5 QUERY: USE DATA FOR ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

From: Beth Weil, U.C. Berkeley (bweil@library.berkeley.edu)

How do we get use data for serials we subscribe to on the web and what should that data be. I'd like web sites we subscribe to, to provide us with use data. Seems like we should be getting more than number of accesses. Here's a couple of things I've been thinking of

# of searches

# of articles viewed

# of prints

I would be very interested in people's comments about this.

52.6 QUERY: COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT TOOLS IN INTEGRATED ONLINE LIBRARY SYSTEMS

From: Mark Funk, Cornell Medical College (mefunk@med.cornell.edu)

Why is it that none of the IOLS out there offer any specific Collection Development module? Sure they all offer Acquisitions, Serials, and Circulation, which are useful. But why can't any of them put out a module specifically designed for us? I am really tired of having to run circulation reports, transfer them into spreadsheets, hunt down previous titles and ceased titles, etc., etc.

I would like a module that:

1. When I call up a monograph record, it will tell me how many times the item has circulated in the last X years, and when the most recent circulation was. This is great for deciding on adding copies or purchasing a new edition.

2. When I call up a serials record, it will tell me how many times the journal has circulated, broken down by year:

American Journal of Expensive Information 1996 - 1

1995 - 2

1994 - 1

1993 - 0

etc.

I can also get a printout (or tab-delimited file) of all the journals in the collection, or only the current titles (and it tracks title changes for you!), or only dead titles (great for weeding decisions). A similar option is also available for monographic series. The system would also automatically calculate the cost per circulation.

3. The system will track approval plan purchases, and report on their circulation patterns over time: this would be broken down by subject or publisher.

None of this is radical stuff, and I suspect that many of us already do this type of information gathering, except that it is very difficult and time consuming, requiring multiple modules, and often involves re-keying data from a printout into a spreadsheet.

Send in your ideas of what a Collection Development module could do. Using our combined brain power, we could give the vendors several hundred thousand dollars of free consultation. I don't mind, if we could get a useful product.

52.7 QUERY: COPYRIGHT GUIDELINES FOR JOURNAL PHOTOCOPYING

From: Diana Zinnato, Thomas Jefferson University (zinnato@jeflin.tju.edu)

I have a question for fellow BLABBERS concerning copyright guidelines and decisions on purchasing journals. We have followed the old guideline of considering something for purchase if we had borrowed it more than 5 times in a year. I'm wondering whether this practice is still necessary/relevant and if anyone else follows it or if they have a different perspective on copyright restrictions. Any insights, experiences or opinions are welcome.