Issue 9: Winter 2008
Interview with Todd Spires, Collection Development Librarian at Bradley University
Janet Fisher Senior Publishing ConsultantTodd Spires has been working in collection development, acquisitions and serials librarianship since 1988. After working for many years in the South at Arkansas State University, Southeastern Louisiana University and Rhodes College, he has recently returned to the Midwest to coordinate collection development and acquisitions functions at Bradley University in Peoria. He has been there for three years. In between tours of duty in the South and the Midwest he traveled both as an Area Representative for Coutts Library Services.
Janet Fisher: Why are aggregated databases valuable to libraries?
Todd Spires: I would say that without question libraries find these products valuable and usually a good value. In addition to the traditional indexing and abstracting, we get content which we might not have purchased otherwise. In many cases, substantial e-journal content can be obtained at a relatively lower price than purchasing comparative e-journal subscriptions. However, in most cases a library will consider the full-text subscription from the publisher as the preferred medium.
JF: Do they meet the needs of some types of libraries better than others?
TS: Larger research-oriented academic libraries will generally purchase full-text access from the publisher as their most desirable medium of access. My assumption is that in many cases, they also subscribe to the aggregated databases to provide easy access and because funds are available to do so. In smaller libraries such as the one I work in, aggregated databases supplement our relatively smaller full-text collections and provide our customers with additional content they would not otherwise have. In this sense, I would say that smaller academic libraries benefit from purchasing these databases more than larger institutions. It is a better value for a smaller library than for a larger institution because more content is available at a relatively lower price.
JF: How do librarians feel about embargos?
TS: I don’t think that librarians mind these TOO much. They are a fact of life it seems. I understand that publishers need to sell their full-text subscriptions first. Giving it all away to a third party doesn’t make any sense. I think of the analogy of book remainders. Publishers first want to sell their content at a high price, but once it gets older and the demand begins to wane, they sell it cheaper. This is a means for them to keep their content available and relevant and can serve as a selling tool. Where the issues come in are with how embargos are implemented. First of all, they need to be as short as possible. The most recent years of a journal tend to be used the most by library users. Also, aggregated database developers and the publishers they work with need to keep their embargos as consistent as possible across as many titles as possible. This is convenient for librarians and library users alike and makes the database seem less confusing and more dependable.
JF: Why would an aggregated database be of more interest than the publisher’s online version?
TS: Honestly, in many cases it is not. In a perfect world, each library would have access to every full-text journal and everyone would be happy. However, I know of very few libraries, even the larger ones, which can buy everything they want. At this point, cost becomes a major deciding factor and choices must be made. Full-text electronic journal subscriptions are very expensive for the most part. Smaller libraries and libraries with insufficient budgets purchase full-text access to those titles they deem to be most critical. Aggregated content serves as a compromise or in many cases a supplement. A library might say to itself, we cannot afford this journal in full-text but it comes in an aggregated database, has decent years of coverage, so they will settle for access that way.
In other ways, aggregated content feels like a bonus to smaller libraries. They need the indexing etc. and for a couple of thousand more usually, access can be given to quality content. At the library I work, we are able to provide at least partial content to thousands of additional titles that we would not otherwise have had access to if it were not for aggregated databases.
JF: What do you do when a title is removed from an aggregated database? Do you replace it with a direct subscription from the publisher?
TS: At the institution I work, we don’t do anything when a title is removed from an aggregated database. The assumption is that our full-text subscriptions represent our core journals and that aggregated content serves as a supplement to these. However, I could foresee us ordering a full-text subscription from the publisher if the title dropped from the database showed very high usage. So far, this has not happened, but it could.