From: Sweeney, Maurine
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2015 12:49 PM

I have been mulling something over, so please just ignore this email
if you are not interested in mullings…and, it might already have been
covered on this listserv.

It seems to me that publishers, aggregators in particular, are
shooting themselves in the foot by not allowing more real estate for
library branding.  I know that many of our faculty, researchers, and
students have the impression that the journals they access on campus
are *open-access*.  I also know that they are not going to go out and
pay for those journals individually through their departments once
they see the actual cost, or even pay for one-time article downloads
for the most part.  This feeds into the overall perception at our
institutions that the libraries don’t really provide that many
services besides study space and computers.  I should note that I work
at an academic health sciences library so our content is almost 99%
electronic at this point.

With the libraries as some of the primary customers of these vendors,
wouldn’t providers want to make sure that we continue to get the
funding we need to buy their products???  If the perception
campus-wide amongst our customers is that we are not providing
content—google scholar is or it's open-access, then we are left only
with endless spreadsheets and cost-effectiveness reports—not the
community support we need to keep our budgets growing to meet price
increases, rather than remaining static or being cut.  It seems to me
that one solution is to dramatically increase the branding real estate
we have on vendor platforms, not some tiny 234x60 image (I’m looking
at you, Elsevier/ScienceDirect) that is on the far top right corner.
Or a 50 character limited line for the library to put its name.
Because, to be frank, our patrons DO NOT CARE what platform content
comes from, just that they get the content they need.  So focusing the
branding on ScienceDirect is sort of pointless.  And, for the most
part, the students use whatever platform the librarians recommend
anyway.

I know it’s not time for a Friday Rant, but this has really been on my
mind.  I would appreciate hearing feedback about this from both
vendors and other librarians or to be pointed in the direction of
research or other information on this topic.

Thank you,

Maurine


Maurine Sweeney
Head of Technical Services
Moody Medical Library/Academic Resources

University of Texas Medical Branch
301 University Blvd., Galveston, TX 77555-1035
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