Volume 2, Issue 2, Spring 2000

Library Adds Online Access to 700 Key Journal Titles

Faculty, students, and staff at the Urbana-Champaign campus soon will have online access to approximately 600 Elsevier journals to which the Library currently subscribes plus 100 additional titles currently available at the two other University campuses.

The University Library system is finalizing a two-year contract with Elsevier Science that allows all three campuses to share a site license for ScienceDirect®, a comprehensive online information source for scientific, technical, social science, and medical research. The system-wide agreement maximizes the University's financial resources and improves the ability of students and researchers to utilize some of the leading journals in their fields.

According to Paula Watson, director of electronic information services, the e-journal collection is a valuable addition to the Library's holdings. "The University's researchers publish and cite more articles in Elsevier journals than in those of other publishers," she says. "Users and librarians alike have been very pleased to have the e-journals available on a trial basis while the contract has been under negotiation."

The online Elsevier journals will be added to several thousand electronic journals already accessible from the Library's website. E-journals are available 24 hours per day for simultaneous access by multiple users whether they are working on campus or elsewhere.

While e-journals provide unprecedented access to scholarly information, they also present certain problems. Site licenses often are very expensive and may restrict certain kinds of access. Further, they generally do not guarantee ownership or future archival access. As a result, libraries such as the University Library are faced with maintaining print resources while working to meet the growing demand for electronic information, which places significant strains on budgets.

Academic libraries are working together increasingly to reduce the costs of providing electronic access. The joint license for ScienceDirect® is one example of such cooperation. The University Library also has participated in consortial agreements for many other databases through the Illinois Library Computer Systems Organization (ILCSO) and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), which provide increased purchasing power through collaboration.