E‐journals Access and Management

Citation

Fourie, I. (2009), "E‐journals Access and Management", The Electronic Library, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 736-737. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470910979679

It is always a privilege to review a book which you can whole‐heartedly recommend for its thorough and in‐depth coverage of a complex, and very contemporary issue. In this case, it is about providing access to e‐journals and ensuring effective management thereof as well as e‐journal maintenance. Ladd Brown (p. 294) refers to the latter as the dreaded M‐word: “Here is the word nobody wants to talk about: ask any veteran e‐journals manager, and he or she will probably tell you that the biggest part of any e‐journal workflow, the part that has the most impact and drain on technical services staff time and energy (and sanity), is e‐journal maintenance.”

Under the capable editorship of Wayne Jones, E‐journals Access and Management, offers contributions from a group of experts (mostly American, UK, and Canadian) exploring a number of burning issues. These include the challenges faced by academic libraries; a specific focus on copyright, e‐journals and libraries; the global movement towards open access (OA) journals; challenges with the preservation of scholarly output and digitization; challenges in license negotiation; the development of a license model based on the experiences of a Canadian consortium; budgets and collection policies for e‐journals; redefining the service roles of libraries in an electronic environment; the decline of print journals; collaboration in moving from print to e‐journals; continuation of print journals; issues related to access (e.g. CrossRef and OpenURL); the development of resource description and access; the need for electronic resource management systems in libraries; deciding on vendor and open source offerings; knowledgebase maintenance and its impact on electronic access tools; electronic resource management using a vendor product; a homegrown contract database; e‐journal workflow, staffing, and collaboration in technical services; e‐journal management in a small academic library; and a final chapter sharing thoughts on the future of e‐journal management and access. The 21 chapters are logically grouped into six parts, displaying the issues that need to be considered by any one working with e‐journal access and management on a practical level, as well as those who are interested in research in the field. The grouping of the parts move through the following: the digital environment; licensing, acquisition, and collection; access and cataloging, metadata and the web; electronic resource management systems; staffing and workflow; and the future.

E‐journals Access and Management is concluded with an excellent index, whose compilers are acknowledged by name. The index can certainly serve as example in the field, and greatly assists in making the content of E‐journals Access and Management accessible to readers who just need to dip in and out, or verify a fact.

All chapters are either well or extensively referenced, thus offering the reader a very good point of departure to pursue a topic of particular interest – something which is extremely important considering the words of Wayne Johnson (p. 25) in a chapter on OA journals. He explains:

Whether we see open access (OA) journals as a challenge to commercial publishing or simply as an alternative that complements more traditional models, there is no question that the OA movement is having a significant impact on how researchers, authors, libraries, and publishers perceive journal literature. Still in its early years, the OA movement holds great potential to enable published research to have a deeper and wider impact on society as a whole. As more people gain access to the world's highest‐caliber scholarly research, including people in the developing world and those not associated with large institutions, new levels of knowledge transfer can flourish. Research from different places and sectors can more readily inform and influence each other.

A rather long quote from E‐journals Access and Management, but for me this captures the very essence why libraries and information services should make every effort to address the challenges of e‐journal access and management, and why E‐journals Access and Management need to be read and studied by all involved, including practitioners, students, and researchers.