>Karen, and interested others,
Here at Drexel, we have been mandated by our library administration to
favor ALL electronic resources over print ones. This plan has worked
very well for MOST disciplines, but not well at all for art, design and
architecture. The main problem with the electronic journals has been the
lack of suitable images. It *is* possible to get some full-text
architecture journals online, but nearly all lack images and the ones that have
them are offering very poor quality substitutes. ProQuest, one of our
aggregators, claims to have a fair amount of online art/architecture
journals WITH images. On closer examination of what they provide as far as
images go, they aren't much better than having no images at all. It's not
their fault; the technology for journals-with-images just hasn't arrived yet.
To answer your questions:
>Have you cancelled print copies of journals and are accessing them
>only online?
For architecture--we have not cancelled print in favor of electronic
because of the image problems. The same is true for most of our art and
design titles, with the exception of some of the film journals which do
have good online versions (and they are not image-dependent).
>Have you cancelled print copies of architectural indexes?
YES. We have Avery and Architectural Index, Art Abstracts and
ArtBibliographies Modern online and no longer get the print versions. The
online databases are very popular, easy to use and because they cover so
many years, retrospective searching is a breeze. We have kept the
print indexes of art abstracts for the years that are not covered
online. We subscribe to the online version of the Grove Dictionary of Art
(an excellent and very popular source) and also have the print version in
our refeence collection.
>How have you dealt with the cd-roms? Things like Architectural Graphic
>Standards or cds of building codes or cds like the Great Buildings cd.
>I'd love to be able to have these on a cd tower, but our network hasn't
>been able to support them.
We don't have these products on CD and get the print versions of the
standards and codes. The Great Buildings online has a useful, although
limited version of their product on the web for free. Since faculty here
haven't requested that we purchase this title on CD, we
haven't. Utimately, we are hoping that these things will eventually be
offered via the web in a subscribable format. We experimented with a CD
database--DAAI (Design and Applied Arts Index)--and mounted it on our local
server, but because it wasn't web-accessible or accessible outside of the
library, it got virtually no use. I think the bottom line here is, if
people have to come into the library to use a resource, they don't mind using
print. What's more, I find that my faculty and students actually LIKE
print materials better, so if they come in, they are seeking the print version.
>Any other issues with electronic publications that you've grappled
>with recently?
The worst problem we've had is with aggregators that *claim* to offer
full-text of titles and what they actually offer is PARTIAL COVERAGE of
titles full-text. And by partial I mean they randomly exclude "meaty"
scholarly articles--not just ads or editorials or book reviews. My
bibliographer colleagues in other areas are continually frustrated by
finding out that after they cancel a print title and subscribe
electronically, they learn that the full-text coverage is incomplete in
so-called full-text journals. ProQuest is especially guilty of this offense.
A related nightmare to this is that when you subscribe to "bundled"
electronic journals, you find out on a monthly basis that they are no longer
offering online access to journal x or journal y. If one of these titles
is a journal that you cancelled print versions to obtain, you've got to
scramble to reinstate your print subscription or be brave enough to
subscribe to it through another electronic vendor. One can imagine the
holdings and catalog problems this causes. I should add that the journals
being cancelled is MORE THAN one or two a month, so it's been
a miserable job for our electronic resources librarian to keep track of.
I feel fortunate in being able to observe these problems happen to
others. It has made me very cautious about letting go of print
materials. Because the design areas are so poorly represented in
electronic format, we in the Architecture and Design school must
"settle" for having a nice solid collection of print journals. Plus, I
have the comfort of knowing that MOST of my print journals will still
belong to my library--and will be fully accessible on the shelves--5, 10 or
even 20 years from now. Unfortunately, that can't be said for those
electronic journals that libraries ultimately "own" until the plug gets pulled!
Hope this helps,
Judy Donovan
Design Arts Librarian
Hagerty Library
Drexel University
33rd and Market Streets
Philadelphia PA 19104
phone: 215-895-2768
fax: 215-895-2070
email: [log in to unmask]
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