let’s say your library subscribes to an e-journal package through a licensing consortium, a package that is licensed to grant perpetual access to the journal issues published during the time you are subscribed — that means you own the content forever. now imagine that you go to access one of those issues and discover that it no longer exists on that publisher’s website, so you go investigating to find what might have happened to it. you discover that another publisher has taken over that title, back volumes included, and that you don’t have access at the new publisher’s site. you email the consortium asking for assistance, which is forwarded to include both publishers to prove that you should indeed have access to the content. wait for some kind of response, the entire time without access to the content that you own.
this happened to us this week. i’m just trying to imagine how this situation is going to scale as more of these takeovers occur. my perpetually sunny attitude now has a termination clause.
I wonder when the lawsuits will begin?
Eeeep! This is my current big research project (that I am secretly hoping to publish before the problem gets big-time major attention). Perpetual access gone bad: tracking disappeared e-titles and denied access. Super interesting and really depressing.
Elizabeth,
Let me know if you want a fresh pair of eyes on your draft, or if you want to talk through the results. I promise to keep your findings under wraps until you publish. Secretly I just want someone to commiserate with. 😉 I agree with both the “interesting” and “depressing” sentiments.
-M
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