E‐journals: A How‐to‐Do‐It Manual for Building, Managing and Supporting Electronic Journal Collections.

Citation

Kidd, T. (2006), "E‐journals: A How‐to‐Do‐It Manual for Building, Managing and Supporting Electronic Journal Collections.", Library Review, Vol. 55 No. 3, pp. 226-227. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530610656046

This practical manual has been compiled by Donnelyn Curtis of the University of Nevada Reno, well‐known as an expert and contributor to various relevant discussion lists. Originally written for the US market, it has been simultaneously published in the UK by CILIP’s Facet Publishing.

While freely admitting I have not read every word of this manual (there must be relatively few manuals on library and information topics that one reads avidly from cover to cover, and that is doubly true for this type of handbook), there is comprehensive coverage of the matter in question in its 400 plus pages. The introductory chapter gives a potted summary of the development and characteristics of e‐journals, together with a flavour of changes in the scholarly communication chain, moves towards open access, and so forth (unsurprisingly the list of references and more information sources that follows each chapter is longest in this case). There is also a welcome chapter on understanding users, reminding us all that the whole point of the considerable effort described in the rest of the book is to provide information, or access to information, that is actually required or wanted by staff and students. Although other environments are briefly described, the standard context throughout is the academic library and university campus.

However, the bulk of this work lives up to its title as a “how‐to‐do‐it manual”, giving detailed comments on topics such as developing a collection of e‐journals, licensing, authentication, ordering and receiving e‐journals, delivery and maintenance of access, providing instruction and technical support, and collecting and evaluating usage statistics. There is space on each page for practitioners to make relevant notes of their own practices. Unusually for an American work, there is no over‐emphasis on cataloguing, with approximately 20 pages devoted to MARC tags and the debate over single or separate records. In fact, priority is given to the provision of web listings, and we are reminded that “our goal is not to get users to think like librarians; our goal is to think like users”. One topic that might have been expected to generate more discussion is that of linking and link resolvers: these are mentioned at a number of points, but perhaps in insufficient detail. In general, however, there are many concrete examples given under each heading, for instance the discussion on licensing begins with analysis of different model licences, and then goes through licences point by point (authorised users, inter‐library loan, course packs, usage statistics, etc.) with illustrations of language from particular licences in each case.

Although this is an American work, the international scene is not ignored – JISC has several mentions in the index for example – and most of the content is as relevant in the UK as in the US. There is a very useful accompanying (publicly available) website at http://www.library.unr.edu/subjects/guides/ejournals.html, which provides links to over 500 organisations, websites, articles, and tables. It was last updated on 13 September 2005: there is no promise (that I could observe) that this will be maintained, but it would be the most useful if this did happen; conversely, the value will soon disappear if not. The website is fairly comprehensive, but does lack some important UK links; JISC is there, but not NESLi2; “Serials” is listed, but not the UK Serials Group site; “lis‐e‐journals” is not present alongside other US‐based discussion lists.

In summary, this is a comprehensive manual, which practising e‐resource librarians will find very useful to have close by as they continue their struggles with the vagaries of electronic journals.