Community of Science

["Daniel Jones" <djones@sfbr.org>]

Greetings all,

Our institution is considering a site license for Community of 
Science [http://www.cos.com/], especially for their Funding 
Opportunities database and alerting service.  We are considering 
approximately 65 workbench accounts, all to be licensed by the 
library.  Based on the webex demo we had yesterday, there is no 
way we can manage the individual workbench accounts, and this 
concerns me.  I was told that all I have to do is to send them a 
list of names and email addresses, and CoS will handle all the 
workbench account setup directly with the scientist.  When a new 
scientist arrives or one leaves, "all I have to do" is to send 
them an email, and they will take care of closing the workbench 
account or setting up a new one.  I am very supportive of having 
this service available to our scientists, but I feel like once I 
send an email, the library will be out of the loop as far as what 
happens next and when, and this concerns me.

It concerns me for several reasons, not the least of which is a 
lack of transparency in the account management process. There is 
also the issue of instructing and training users.  I would like 
to have functionality similar to what we have with ILLiad and 
Voyager, where we can expire accounts and set up new ones, but 
that does not seem to be possible.

We had a similar type of service that we paid $7500/year for when 
I got here about 4 years ago, and when I asked scientists about 
it, only one of 65 persons was using it, and even he was 
supportive of discontinuing this service.

I would be interested in hearing off-list from any libraries that 
manage their institution's Community of Science license including 
workbench accounts, so that I could contact you to talk about 
your experience in managing it.

Regards,
Danny Jones

=======================
Daniel H. Jones, M.L.S.
Librarian
Preston G. Northrup Memorial Library
Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research
Tel:  210-258-9426
Fax:  210-670-3313
Email:  djones@sfbr.org
=======================