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89 av 123 forskningsbibliotek som ingår i ARL, American Research
Libraries
har svarat på en enkät om sina tidskriftspaket. En liknande enkät gjordes
2003.
ARL Bimonthly Report
245
April 2006
The State of the Large Publisher Bundle:
Findings from an ARL Member Survey
by Karla Hahn, Director, ARL Office of Scholarly
Communication
http://www.arl.org/newsltr/245/bundle.html
Bakgrunden är naturligtvis att allt större andel av dom stora
forskningsbibliotekens
anslag binds upp i paketavtal av typen Big Deals.
Det vanligaste svaret till varför man tecknat konsortieavtal
var:
“Content and access offered were a good return on the investment”
Problemet är att det finns egentligen inget alternativ och att svaren
speglar enligt
Karla Hahn:
"While it is impressive that so many libraries report a sense of
good value obtained
by their contracts, it is disturbing that so many reported that they did
not have
affordable alternatives (often for the same contract). This
suggests that libraries
may be making the best of a bad situation. A deal may be perceived
as a good
one simply because there are no other deals to be had."
Lite förvånansvärt är att biblioteken är nöjda med priserna. Håller man
god min?
"Libraries appear slightly more satisfied than not with the prices
of their journal
bundles. Half of the responding libraries reported that their
contracts are “somewhat
reasonable” or “very reasonable” in terms of cost. Almost a third
of respondents
reported that they were neutral in their assessment of their current
price terms.
An assessment that current contract terms were “somewhat
unreasonable” or
“quite unreasonable” was reported for 18% of contracts.
Ett faktum som vi även ser i Sverige är att dom stora
forskningsbibliotekens
samlingar utarmas och att beståndet blir allt mer likartat. Lokala
skillnader som
borde finnas försvinner:
"These data paint a fascinating but at times disturbing picture of
the state of journal
bundle acquisitions in research libraries. There is no doubt that
large commercial
publishers’ bundles are a substantial part of research library
collections. It is also
clear that significant changes in library collections are underway.
Cancellation
projects are common. Shifts to e-only collecting for journal
bundles are proceeding
rapidly."
Karla Hahn ställer en mängd viktiga frågor som det inte finns svar
på:
This raises the important question of how much the variation in contract
terms and the
relatively common acceptance of some terms that the community has tried
to discourage
can be attributed to poor negotiating among the community? How much
of it might be
attributable to market power? Obviously this is a very difficult
question to answer.
For instance why are some publishers more commonly obtaining
nondisclosure terms
than others? Why are so many libraries accepting nondisclosure
terms when there is
widespread agreement that such terms are generally undesirable?
Perhaps a better
understanding of the current state of contract terms as well as the range
of terms different
negotiations have achieved will enable libraries to more successfully
negotiate future contracts.
Problemen tycks inte vara själva idén med Big Deals utan:
"If libraries could eliminate nondisclosure clauses, obtain more
generous cancellation terms,
and achieve better price structures, satisfaction with bundles would
likely increase"
Undersökning efter undersökning, bl.a ett par svenska, har visat att
användningen av
tidskrifterna inom ett paket varierar kraftigt och att sanningen ligger
nära 80/20. Dvs. att 20%
av tidskrifterna som ingår i dom stora generella paketen står för 80% av
nedladdade artiklar.
Jan
Jan Szczepanski
Förste bibliotekarie
Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek
Box 222
SE 405 30 Goteborg, SWEDEN
Tel: +46 31 773 1164 Fax: +46 31 163797
E-mail: [log in to unmask]