RE: ALA Panel on Perpetual Access - seeking input

[Mike Poulin <mpoulin@mail.colgate.edu>]

Unfortunately, I am not attending midwinter as this would be a 
timely topic to hear views from both vendors and librarians.

As we moved towards more "online only" titles, the issue of 
perpetual access has become more important in our roles as 
stewards of the institution's investment.  As a result - we 
instituted a change in our collection development policy which 
addressed the issue directly and which basically states we will 
generally stay with print or print + online when we have no good 
archiving system in place.  We are a pretty small school in terms 
of staff so that has meant outsourcing the archive by subscribing 
to Portico since we have no staff time to maintain a LOCCKS 
system.

This year we moved over 200 subscriptions to online only for 
those publishers offering post-cancellation rights via Portico. 
For a few major publishers (Springer for example) who do not 
offer post-cancellation rights - we have retain print only. As 
our print use continues to diminish - those titles will likely 
become targets for cancellation.

With that as background and in the current budgetary condition 
where many of us will have to make hard choices about reducing 
lesser used titles - it seems that perpetual access is only worth 
anything if it includes post-cancellation rights and if 
guaranteed by having a copy in print, from a third party such as 
Portico, or if you can do it yourself with LOCCKS.  One cannot 
predict the changes in publishing industry - merges, changes in 
policies, etc. - so without an independent provider for the 
content you have very little to fall back upon.  I would have 
liked to hear discussion about this topic.

It would be interesting to hear from publishers who do not 
provide post-cancellation rights via a third party if they 
believe that it will affect their ability to compete for those 
scarce library subscription dollars.

For what it is worth.

Mike

---------------------------------------
Mike Poulin
Digital Resources Librarian & Coordinator of Digital Initiatives
Colgate University Libraries
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, NY 13346
315-228-7025
fax: 315-228-7934
mpoulin@mail.colgate.edu
--------------------