taking an inventory of perpetual access holdings

that title made you flinch, didn’t it?  it should.  if you manage electronic resources for your library, go make a list of titles and holdings of all the e-journals to which you have perpetual access RIGHT NOW.  i’m not kidding.  here’s why it’s critical that you do this: most of your e-journal publishers aren’t keeping track.  play the DRAMA BUTTON before you read on.

we recently proposed a print journal withdrawal project at my library, which would allow us to withdraw print volumes from the collection if we have the same volumes in electronic format in perpetuity.  “in perpetuity” means that we’ve actually purchased the content and own it forever, instead of subscribing to the content and access it only while the subscription is current.  the obvious first step in this project is to see which titles we have in print that we also own in electronic format in perpetuity.  we have a clean inventory of the print titles because they’re what display in our catalog, they have order records to show payment, and have corroborating entries in our subscription vendor’s database.  we do not have a clean inventory of the electronic journals to which we have perpetual access.  here’s why.

we generally purchase electronic content as part of a consortium, and enter multi-year deals for the best pricing.  the majority of those multi-year deals state that whatever is published during the term of the license is ours to keep forever (“in perpetuity”).  the rub is that nobody has really been keeping track of what titles and holdings were part of the package when we started the deal, or which titles have left/entered during the term of the deal.  our consortium’s not doing it because many of the title lists are customized per university; they can’t possibly keep track of 30ish title lists for each year, for each package that we enter.  the stunning part is that the publishers aren’t really keeping track either.  of the ten publishers from which i’ve requested title lists for each year of our multi-year deal, only three have been able to readily hand over the lists.  this is worrying.

over the past month i’ve been requesting title lists from the publishers and then using those lists to see if they match what i think we own.  i’ve only worked here for two years, so for multi-year deals that have run longer i’m at a loss to remember how the deal started and which were the titles associated with the package.  the title lists we have kept on a shared drive are like gold, because they’re at least some record of past purchases.

the moral of the story is this: as you enter a multi-year deal for which there is perpetual access for the content, keep a list – somewhere, anywhere – of the titles and holdings for each year of the deal.  your consortium is not keeping this information for you.  the majority of your publishers aren’t keeping this information for you.

this post begs the question: if publishers aren’t keeping track of what i own in perpetuity, how can i trust them to provide access to that content down the road?  want the drama button again?  i think so.