From: Karin Wikoff <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 14:39:37 +0000

This is a long-time irritant.  Some years ago, we subscribed to four
collections from Sage.  Each had its own link that went to content in
that area.  It was a full-text collection, so the user knew everything
she searched and found would be there in full text – no need to monkey
around with ILL or be disappointed that content was not there.  At
some point, all the sudden, the links were all pointing to the same
place, and that place included ALL the Sage content, whether we
subscribed to it or not.  Very annoying.  We kept getting inquiries –
is something not working right here?  I can’t get to this article I
saw….  To us, that’s not what we were paying really high prices to
access.  We kept the content for some more years, even though we were
not pleased to be presenting users with all kinds of content they
could not access, and more recently, as usage fell off, we canceled
most of the subscriptions.  I wouldn’t say that was a direct result of
the irritation over defaulting to searching all content, subscribed
and unsubscribed alike, without recourse to changing the default, but
that factor certainly didn’t endear Sage to us.

If some libraries want to make the unsubscribed content more visible,
for whatever reasons, it should be an option for them; likewise, I
would tell publishers, don’t force that on libraries who prefer not to
take that approach.  Customers like to have the flexibility to choose
for ourselves for our own local reasons, and it just makes us grumpy
when we can’t.  (Especially when we had what we wanted and it was
taken away).  Bringing up the subject at the time of license
negotiation is one strategy and I thank you for suggesting it.

My opinion only,

Karin

Karin Wikoff
Electronic and Technical Services Librarian
Ithaca College Library
953 Danby Rd
Ithaca, NY 14850

Phone: 1-607-274-1364
Fax: 1-607-274-1539
Email: [log in to unmask]

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From: "Kearney, Richard" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2016 16:48:31 +0000

Question:  Should a library administrator option to suppress
non-subscribed content on a publisher platform (as a default search
option) be a licensing issue?

Background:  An increasing number of publisher platforms have either
removed, or have never provided, or refuse to provide, an ability for
local administrators at subscribing institutions to establish a
default setting such that searches on the platform are limited to the
subscribed/leased content. The result of this for users who have the
misfortune of conducting searches on their platforms is enormous and
increasing frustration as they encounter item after item to which they
are denied access. While a few publishers offer a hard-to-notice
checkbox on the search screen that users can check or uncheck to limit
their searches to subscription content, most do not enable subscribing
libraries to set this as the default search mode.

Publishers have every right to use their platforms as marketing tools
to the public and are free to sell their articles, book chapters, etc.
to anyone who wants to buy them. But subscribing libraries that place
links to publisher platforms on their web sites because they hold
subscriptions or leases to some portion of the available content
(rarely, if ever, all of it because no library has the budgetary
resources for that) have a reasonable expectation that such links
should represent that part of the publisher's content that is in the
library's collection. When users conduct searches using publisher
interfaces through links accessed on a library's web site, they also
have this expectation and do not understand why so many of their
results lead to paywalls and denials of access. In a multitude of
cases this has led to avoidable inquiries/complaints to libraries and
the consumption of costly staff time to reach the conclusion that an
item is not accessible because a library does not hold a subscription
or lease, a conclusion that is clearly communicated to the user when
the path they follow is through a citation in an index (and which also
provides a link to request said item through ILL).

I am well aware of the interest many libraries have in
"evidence-based" observation of user behavior for the purpose of
informing collection development decisions and the allocation of
limited budgetary resources. For this purpose they look at turnaways
in their usage reports, patterns of inter-library loan requests, web
analytics, and other data. But this interest should not be conflated
with these publisher practices. They are not the same thing. No
publisher platform constitutes a subject index. There may be many
libraries that prefer to have links on their sites to publisher
platforms that do not limit searches to subscribed/leased content, but
at a minimum libraries should have the option to apply such limits
through their local administrative accounts.

In the short term, libraries can address this issue in a number of ways:

1) In some instances, they can modify login URLs to check or uncheck
boxes to limit searches to subscribed content when that option is
available;

2) They can insert intermediate pages prior to platform logins with
screenshots directing users to select the option to limit searches to
subscribed content to avoid having non-accessible content returned to
them in searches

3) They can simply remove links to publisher platforms from their web
sites and enable access to subscription content through their
e-resource knowledgebase, which in turn will connect to their online
journal directory, their link resolver, and their discovery service.

But none of these are really satisfactory. Instead, I submit that
libraries should consider incorporating an ability to set a default
search restriction to subscribed/leased content as a feature of their
licenses.

Thoughts from librarians?

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Richard Kearney

Working without a contract since June 2015!
Electronic Resources Librarian
David and Lorraine Cheng Library
William Paterson University
300 Pompton Road
Wayne, NJ 07470
Tel. 973.720.2165
Fax  973.720.2585
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