From: Eric Elmore <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 18:11:33 +0000 I'd like to add that on at least one occasion that I can remember, the publisher's decision to foist all their content onto one confusing platform led us to actually cancel our subscription to that vendor's content. The users found the site so confusing and the inability to actually get to "the content" so frustrating, that the platform got a bad reputation amongst the students, who started to refuse to use the platform, driving down usage, which led to cancellation. Yay karma. Sadly the poetic justice only lasted a brief period, as that vendor was gobbled up by yet another, even larger, dubious actor with whom have a massive consortial deal. The "saving grace" is when you have almost everything from the vendor thanks to a big box deal, false leads to content are limited. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Eric Elmore | Electronic Resources Coordinator | The University of Texas at San Antonio | One UTSA Circle | San Antonio, TX. 78249-0671 | (O)210-458-4916/(F)210-458-4577 | [log in to unmask] | ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -----Original Message----- 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] ******* 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? *************************************************** 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 [log in to unmask] Cheng Library Extra Blog Newsfeed ***************************************************