perpetual pipe dream

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Marie Kennedy

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.

 

Posted in e-resource mgmt, management, publishers | 4 Comments

Award!

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Marie Kennedy

IGI awardThank you, IGI Global!

Posted in library | 2 Comments

marketing electronic resources, a curated collection

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Marie Kennedy

it’s been a while since i mentioned the scoop.it collection of web snippets i’ve been collecting to demonstrate ways libraries are marketing their electronic resources. the curated collection may be found at http://www.scoop.it/t/marketing-electronic-resources . maybe you want to add it to your feed reader so you can be consistently reminded of the innovative ways libraries are connecting with their patrons about e-resources. i’ve already posted 148 web snippets; there’s a wealth of good stuff for you to consider using at your own institution.

if your library is doing something cool to market its e-resources, please direct me to it! from the marketing-electronic-resources site, click on the button at the top that says “suggest” and paste in the url to point me to the web site that describes the cool thing. i look forward to hearing from you!

Posted in e-resource mgmt, marketing | Comments Off on marketing electronic resources, a curated collection

plain language spoken here

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Marie Kennedy

Part of my job as the e-resources librarian is to negotiate the language of license agreements for e-resources that my library purchases or subscribes. After you’ve read a few licenses it is easy to pick up on language that is intended to obfuscate or is missing entirely. It falls to me to clarify or make explicit so that our library patrons have the widest possible use of the licensed resource. The most common negotiating point (after indemnification and governing law) is our request for permission to lend a reasonable portion of the materials via interlibrary loan (ILL) and use that content for teaching, via a link through our course management software.

There is a NISO effort called SERU (A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding) which is designed to remove the whole license agreement negotiation practice in favor of a mutually agreeable understanding between a library and a vendor in how the vendor’s resource may be used. In reviewing the revised draft currently under public comment on SERU (http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/7842/NISO_RP-7-201X-for_public_comment.pdf) I found the language presented there to be so clear on a topic that is usually so muddied that I’m copying it here for you to admire:

Some of the accepted uses include interlibrary loan and ad hoc sharing of single articles and chapters by individuals for purposes of scholarship and private study. Linking to the content at the provider’s site for use in courses is also acceptable.

If you’d like to read more about SERU to see if it may be appropriate for your library, see http://www.niso.org/workrooms/seru/. To view a list of content providers and libraries that have agreed to consider using SERU when appropriate, see http://www.niso.org/workrooms/seru/registry/ (my institution, Loyola Marymount University, is listed there!).

Posted in articles i'm reading, e-resource mgmt, license agreements | Comments Off on plain language spoken here

monkey corker

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Marie Kennedy

oh man.


http://www.monkeybusiness.co.il/product.cfm?MB_cId=16&MB_pId=180&nosub=1

Posted in monkeys/bananas | Comments Off on monkey corker

Melancholy : a depression of spirits

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Marie Kennedy

The cycle of mounting and executing and moving on to the next project has skidded to a halt, and he cannot say why. It does not make sense to him. Not this night or any other, not at any level of the brandy bottle. This is not how it is supposed to work. A project is started, it is developed and mounted and sent out into the world, and more often than not it becomes self-sufficient. And then he is no longer needed. It is not always a pleasant position to be in, but it is the way of such things, and Chandresh knows this process well. One is proud, one collects one’s receipts, and even if one is a bit melancholy, one moves on. — p. 243 The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

I’m in the process of completing our book, doing final changes at the editor’s request. It occurs to me that the book will soon exist on its own, without my further development of it or interaction with it, soon to be “sent out into the world.” Melancholy, indeed.

Posted in marketing, writing | Comments Off on Melancholy : a depression of spirits