Tips for Journal Activators (DRAFT)*
Customer Numbers
Many ejournals are available for free trial periods or free
with print. Usually there is an online registration form. Often a customer
number is required. For HighWire Press journals, for example, the customer
number is often on the mailing label. It can be very time-consuming or
even impossible to get this information if you don't save your mailing
labels. Since we throw ours away before we do check-in, I don't even try.
How to get your customer number
The registration website usually gives a phone number or
email address to use if you have forgotten or do not have your customer
number. I usually call & explain that we check in 16,000 issues per
year and the first thing we do is discard the wrapper. The publisher will
then give you your customer number. Occasionally they ask for more information
which you may need to get from your serials vendor. Once I have gotten
the customer number, I enter it in the OPR of the Orbis record for the
print copy (in the REF field) for future reference.
Some vendors will supply lists of your subscriptions which
include your personal identification number or customer number. Ebsco and
Harrassowitz provide this service. The list I received from Ebsco doesn't
have PID numbers for all of our subscriptions, but it does have some and
saves me some phone calls to the individual publishers.
Terms & Conditions
If you are registering journals yourself, you need to actually
read the terms and conditions. If there is not an actual link for "Terms
and Conditions," this information may sometimes be found at the bottom
of the webpage by clicking on the publisher's name. Just because an ejournal
is free, it does not mean that we can necessarily agree to their terms
and conditions. One example is the journal Blood which requires its online
journal to be used only in "the institution's library or research facilities
(i.e., the buildings to which issues of the journal are sent or where issues
of the journal are housed). No access to Blood Online will be permitted
to individuals ... situated elsewhere on the institutions' campuses (e.g.,
lodgings, classrooms, offices) or at off-campus sites." You will probably
be asked to agree to the terms before you are allowed to complete the registration
process. If you have not ever done any license negotiation before, refer
whatever you find to a selector, Kimberly
Parker or Ann Okerson.
If you have any questions about or problems with the terms, contact Kim
before you go any further. In any case, any terms and conditions (whether
requiring signature, click-through registration, or simply existing on
the site as something that use of the product will signify agreement with)
means approval needs to be indicated by Ann
Okerson and a copy needs to go to Kim
for the official license files. (Only exceptions to this are where University
Library funds are not implicated in the process -- and if we are getting
the e-version because of payment for the print version, then University
Library funds are implicated.)
Contact Person
Once you have agreed to the terms and conditions, you will
be asked to complete a registration form. You need to submit the name of
a contact person and that person's address, phone number, email address,
etc. The contact person often needs to choose a username and password,
which will permit him to update account information online in the future.
Save your username and password somewhere where you can find them again.
Being a "contact
person" does involve some ongoing work with the resource. Each unit
may want a single person to serve as their contact for all resources. That
person should talk to Kim,
Carol
Jones, or Cindy Crooker
about all the implications of being a contact.
Registering IP addresses
Once the contact information is complete, you will be asked
to submit your institution's IP addresses. Be sure to use the list
of institutional IP addresses as this is always the most recent information.
Once the IP's are registered, you should get a screen confirming the numbers
you have entered and the contact information, and the subscription will
be activated. It is a good idea to print this screen and save it. You may
also receive email confirmation of the activation.
Record Keeping
Cindy keeps
a big notebook of the journals she has registered, including printouts
of the IP ranges registered and her contact information. This comes in
handy when you have to go back and change IP addresses, as we did after
the Yale New Haven Hospital added 4 new IP ranges without advance notice.
Make Sure It Works
Once your online subscription has been activated, you should
try it to make sure it works. If you get asked for a password or have some
other problem with access, you will need to call the publisher and straighten
it out. (The contact person's password is just for account maintenance
work. Patrons should not get asked for a password when trying to access
the journal.) Ejournal activations often require some sort of follow-up.
Let People Know It Exists
If you have activated something as part of a big package
"switch-on", and selectors weren't involved in the process at any point
(either by asking for titles, or helping with the licenses), they need
to be told about the access. This is so they can decide whether to actually
put any more work into publicizing the availability of a particular journal
(cataloging it, adding it to web lists).
In any case, once you know the access works, you should
notify relevant staff who:
add titles to your local webpages,
catalog e-journals (if it will be around for a reasonable
amount of time)
add titles to the central list of all electronic journals.
*Credit: The initial version of this
tips page was drafted by Cindy Crooker, Medical Library
Return to Guidelines for Activation of "Free-with-Print"
Electronic Versions of Journals
Last modified:Monday, 12-Jun-2000 14:58:28 EDT
http://www.library.yale.edu/ecollections/ejouractivtips.html
