From: Joanne Romano <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2015 08:30:59 -0600

Hi, Maurine,

Overall, I would concur with your frustration here, about libraries
being limited to the space provided on vendor platforms to advertise
that the library's brand.   After all, we've spent budget dollars
providing the content the patrons have become accustomed to accessing,
and we should be able to state that plainly. I don't know how many of
our patrons actually pay attention to our branding, but I certainly
like to see it, and as a paying customer, feel it should be part of
the service provided by the vendor.

This should apply to the smaller independent society publishers as
well;  I don't have statistics to provide on how many of those allow
for branding, but within the 70 or so that I subscribe with, it's
about a dozen or so who allow for branding at all.

Thanks for bringing this topic up to the surface for further discussion.

Joanne

Joanne V. Romano, MLS
Head of Resource Management

Texas Medical Center Library
Houston, TX 77030
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On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 8:08 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> 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
> E [log in to unmask]