------------ The impact of electronic journals on libnny collection management: a case study of the Pilkington Library by Veronique Mallau, B.A. A Master's Dissertation, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Arts degree of the Loughborough University. September 1996 Supen-isor: Mrs Hazel M. Woodward, BA, ALA, MllnfSc Pilkington Library, Academic Sen-ices Manager © V. Mallau, 1996 Abstract ----Electronicjournals -(e-journals) are a recent and exciting development of the scholarly communication since they offer a number of practical advantages over the printed ones (e.g. speed of publication, multimedia, etc.). A growing number of enthusiastic scholars are supporting e-journals, and are canvassing to widespread their use. They claim that this new delivery method of information will revolutionise the concept of a scholar journal and may offer a solution to the current serials pricing crisis. Libraries have started to integrate and promote access to e-journals for the benefits of their users. Handling e­ joumals, however, requires different methods from the ones for the printed publications. The Pilkington Library case study illustrates some of the dilemmas '~' arising in the process of selection and acquisition, access and bibliographical i, control, storage and archiving, costs and resource allocation, training, and other issues such as copyright control and text integrity. For instance, cataloguing rules need to be revised and adapted; a choice between 'pointing to' or 'owning' the material is part of the storage requirements; to reduce costs, libraries could 'publish' themselves e-journals, hence, helping to maintain standards and credibility. A comparison of ten UK library e-joumal service World Wide Web pages with the Pilkington Library one aims to show the different approaches adopted by these to offer e-journal access. The growth of e-journals enables us to assume that a promising future is on its way, where scholars and universities, libraries, subscription agents, and publishers, depending on their active involvement, are likely to shape in which direction e-joumals are heading to. ii Acknowledgements ----------- I would like to thank Mrs Hazel M. Woodward, Academic Services Manager, at the Pilkington Library, to whom I am greatly indebted for her availability, patience, kindness and help during the supervision of the writing of this dissertation. I would like to thank Mr Jeff J. Brown, Assistant Librarian, who helped me to gather information on the cataloguing process in the Pilkington Library. And finally I would to thank Ms Ann O'Brien, Lecturer at the Department of Information and Library Studies at Loughborough University, my family and Allan for their encouraging support. iii L______________________________________ _ TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 11 Acknowledgements 111 Table of contents IV Introduction 1 Part 1: Current Situation 1.1 Development of electronic journals 2 1.2 Electronic journals: three distinct categories 3 1.3 Definition of electronic journals 4 1.4 Electronic Journals: current issues 6 1.4.1 How many? 6 1.4.2 Access and costs 7 1.4.3 Producers 8 1.4.4 Subject categories 8 1.5 Scholarly communication fostering electronic journals 8 1.6 Comparison of electronic journals with paper journals 9 References 13 Part 11: Collection Management Issues 11.1 Selection and acquisition 16 11.2 Access and bibliographtcal control 18 11.3 Storage and archiving 23 11.4 Costs and resource allocation 26 11 5 Training 28 11.6 Other issues 28 References 32 iv Part ID: Pilkington Libnuy Case Study 111.1 E-joumals available at the Pilkington Library 37 III.l.l Commercial e-joumals 38 Ill 1.2 Free e-joumals 39 III.2 Selection and acquisition 39 111.3 Access and bibliographical control 40 Ill 4 Storage and archiving 46 III.S Costs and resource allocation 46 III 6 Training 46 III.7 Research activities of the Pilkington Ltbrary: Cafe Jus 47 III 8 Pilkington Ltbrary WWW Homepage: evaluation 48 References 52 Part IV: Comparative Study IV .I University of Southampton Library 53 IV.2 University of Liverpool Library 54 IV.3 University College London Ltbrary (UCL) ss IV.4 Leeds University Ltbrary 56 IV.S Keele University Library 56 IV.6 Oxford University libraries Automation Service WWW server Home page 57 IV.7 University of Essex Library 58 IV 8 University of York Library 58 IV 9 University of Sunderland Information Services Home page 59 IV.IO John Rylands University Ltbrary of Manchester 60 IV.ll Comparison with the Ptlkington Library WWW home page and conclusions 60 Part V: The Future V .I Likely picture of e-joumals in the future 65 V.2 The scholars 67 V ----------------------------------------------------, V.3 The librarians 71 V.4 The subscription agents 73 V.S The publishers 74 References 76 Conclusion 80 Bibliogmphy Appendices vi ---- ----- -------' INTRODUCTION The profusion of information and the technological advances of the past decades have had an important impact on libraries. Online networked databases, CD-ROMs, and CD-I, are some examples of the number of electronic services libraries now offer to their clients, to improve access to information. Electronic journals (e-journals) are a fairly recent medium of delivery of information. Not only do they add to this glut of information the flexibility of an electronic format, but also the promise of a new era of scholarly communication. This study aims to introduce e-journals and to study their affect on library collection management The first part describes a broad picture of the current situation, the second part raises the library collection management issues, the third part illustrates the latter with the case study of the Pilkington Library, whose World Wide Web (WWW) based e-journals service is the object of a comparison, in the fourth part, with ten similar services in the UK. The fifth part attempts to foresee the future of e-journals with all the major players involved. As e-journals are a fast moving area, a constant difficulty has been to keep up-to-date with the latest changes to provide an accurate description. Clearly further advances must be anticipated on an ongoing basis for several years to come. -, 1 E-JOURNALS - part I: Current Situation Ll Development of electronic journals The electronic journal (e-journal) is a relatively recent phenomenon. Turroff and Hiltz (1) have recorded that the ftrst e-joumal dates back to 1976, but e-journals outside an experimental infrastructure appeared much later on. They have been mainly generated in the academic environment since the late 1980s and early 1990s and are subjected to a continuous wide expansion. The first developments comprised experiments including major projects such as DOCDEL in Europe, and BLEND and QUARTET in the United Kingdom; BLEND investigated the feasibility of an e-joumal and the feasibility of supporting the entire communication process via computers; QUARTET examined the implications of Information Technology on the scholarly communication process (2, 3). They allowed important progress but the limited technology of the time (1980s) and the lack of appropriate networks slowed their practical effects down. According to Rowland (4), the recent and current electronic projects belongs to three broad categories: a) Services intended from the outset to be commercial activities Subscription agents are providing CAS-IAS services (Current Alerting Services combined with lildividual Article Supply), though these can be considered more as document delivery services rather than electronic publishing proper (e.g. Uncover, Swetscan, the British Library's Inside Information service). Also comprised in this category are: Chapman and Hall publishers who are making available electronic versions of their printed journals (5). 2 E-JOURNALS - part I: Current Situation b) Dual publishing experiments run collaboratively by publishers and libraries This includes: the CORE project, which aims to deliver a large majority of the journal literature needed by one academic community in electronic form to workstations in a library and to terminals on the desks of academics; the TULIP project, which comprises forty two e-journals in the subject field of materials science delivered to fifteen university libraries in the USA; the CD­ ROM Acrobat Journals Using Networks (CAJUN) project involving the following publishers: Wiley and Chapman and Hall; Elsevier publisher in collaboration with the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) is offering the journal Immunology Today online; other famous projects are MUSE, Red Sage, ELVYN projects (6). c) Completely new electronic scholarly journals These are e-journals, generally with no printed counterpart, freely accessible through the Internet. Psycholoquy is probably the most famous title, as its producer Hamad has been a precursor of this new delivery method of information. Preprint exchanges is another example defined as the activity of distributing preprints through computer networks (7). The most famous example is the Los Alamos Physics Pre-Print service. L2 Electronic journals: three distinct categories There are different types of e-journals, Woodward divides them in three categories (8, 9). The first is the online e-joumal. Online hosts, such as Dialog Information 3 E-JOURNALS • part 1: Cumnt Situation Services, provide full-text of some existing printed journals electronically. The integrity of the journal is rarely supplied, parts such as book reviews, notes, calendars are often removed. It is based on a pay-per-use basis and access is expensive. The second is the CD-ROM e-journal. Electronic versions of some journals and national newspapers are available on CD-ROMs. In addition some CD-ROMs gather collections of full-text journals. For instance, the CD-ROM ADONIS covers 500 biomedical journals. The third is the networked e-journal, which will be the main focus of this study. This type of e-journal is available, as its title indicates, on computer networks such as the Internet and may be made freely available on the latter or be subscription based, from a commercial publisher.