From: Eric Elmore <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2020 14:45:18 +0000

Good morning Jim and everyone, hope you’re all healthy and safeJ    To
start we’re being selective in what open offers we take advantage of.  Not
everything being offered is something our users would be interested in or
need, so our subject librarians are applying the normal evaluation
procedures to the offers.  So that cuts down on how much we have to manage.



As far as actually managing the ones we do choose to take advantage of –
we’re doing a couple of things.  We use Libguides to manage our databases
and present them in subject groupings to our users.  For resources we don’t
already have a customer-vendor relationship with we created a new category
in our libguides called “temporary resources
<http://libguides.utsa.edu/az.php?t=40869>”, clever I know;)  We’re
treating them like we would a normal trial resource, just segregating them
into their own category in the hopes our users will understand they’re
temporary and we likely won’t have access to that content when the pandemic
is over or the access ends.



For vendors we do have customer relationships currently set up we’re trying
to just let the new content appear on our normal vendor site with the
understanding that the non-subsrcibed/owned content will go away at some
point in the future.  De Gruyter, T&F, etc. are good examples – we just let
the new content appear along with our normal content.  If the vendor
doesn’t let us do that or has a different platform for the gratis content
we’re doing normal trial types of entries in libguides.  (so far we haven’t
needed to do trials, but the option is open if not used).



I have a full-time library associate who manages our database entries and
the first couple of weeks were a real chore for him to keep up, thankfully
it has slowed down now.



Happy Tuesday ya’all,

E



===============================================================================

Eric
Elmore
|

Electronic Resources, Discovery & Access
Coordinator
|

John Peace Library (JPL
04.03.16k)
|

University of Texas at San Antonio

|

One UTSA
Circle
|

San Antonio, TX
78249-0671
|

(O)210-458-4916/(F)210-458-7577
|

[log in to unmask]
|

===============================================================================



From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>

Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2020 16:20:01 -0700

Over the past few weeks, academic libraries have been awash in generous
offers of temporary free access to electronic information resources that
otherwise come with a sturdy price.  The complications are real:  Can we
hear on the list from anyone who has or knows of good models for handling
this shower of benevolence.



The complications are real.  First, there is little rhyme or reason or
pattern to what is being offered.  Some single publishers are offering a
short extract of their publications list, others make their entire
collections available, still others are aggregators with thousands and
thousands of titles.  Some offers are made to all; some are to specific
institutions or specific consortia; others are to end-users only.  Some are
for longer and others for shorter periods of time.  Second, it is difficult
to know, without investing staff time, just what is contained in any given
announced resource.  Third, promoting these resources usefully to faculty
and students would require some curation time at least to determine who
might be interested in what and to display the possibilities intelligibly
(with their end dates, which may change and will need to be updated).
Fourth, there are numerous (and different) lists and places for
announcements of such offerings.  Fifth, some of the purpose of making this
material freely available may come from vendors that are hoping to entice
users to some products they've not seen before and send those users back to
their librarians insisting -- when the free period is over -- that we
absolutely must subscribe to some of them -- at a moment when prospects of
budget flexibility are evaporating and cancelations are looming.



So my question is:  how do we balance the impulse to make known with the
real costs of doing so?  At ASU, we have a "libguide" page listing
resources we think possibly relevant to our users in alphabetical order:  a
dog's breakfast of a list.  Our liaison librarians will call items they
think highly relevant to faculty/discipline attention.  Is there a better
way to handle this?



With thanks for any enlightenment,

Jim O'Donnell

ASU