Seriously? A Series of Tips on Setting Up a Research Library (Part 11)

“'But then,' thought Alice. 'shall I never get any older than I am now? That'll be a comfort, one way--never to be an old woman--but then--always to have lessons to learn!'” -- Lewis Carroll (English Logician, Mathematician, Photographer and Novelist. 1832-1898)

ADDENDUM: MORE ON DOCUMENT ACQUISITION
There will be times when you can’t find an online source for the full text of an article.  This is especially true of older articles.  It is also a common problem when attempting to find a paper delivered at a conference.

For example, one of the references listed in Tables of Collision Integrals and Second Virial Coefficients for the [m,6,8] Intermolecular Potential Function, by Max Klein. H.J.M. Hanley, Francis J. Smith, and Paul Holland (1974) is …

Hanley, H.J.M., Klein, Max, National Bureau of Standards, Tech. Note 360

If we needed to acquire the full text of this item, we would not be able to find it on the Web.

At this point, we would contact a third party specializing in document delivery.  Three of the best known are ..

British Library Document Supply Service (BLDSS) (www.bl.uk/bldss)
Source for scholarly journals, conference proceedings, books, patents, grey literature (government and federal publications), technical reports, theses and dissertations, newspapers, and musical scores

Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology (https://www.lindahall.org/)
Source for scholarly journals, conference proceedings, government documents, historical documents, foreign language journals, monographs, conference proceedings, indexes and abstracts, technical reports, engineering standards and specifications, patents, and technical meeting papers from engineering societies

PADDS - Petroleum Abstracts Document Delivery Service (https://www.pa.utulsa.edu/services.mhtml)
In addition to over 1.1 million documents cited in Petroleum Abstracts, PADDS provides documents from the entire collection of The University of Tulsa library. PADDS has served the document delivery needs of the petroleum industry for more than 40 years.

Download Document Delivery: Best Practices and Vendor Scorecard – 2012 Update
(http://info.reprintsdesk.com/Portals/28841/docs/outselldocdel-rd.pdf ) for a complete list of major document delivery vendors.

Visit www.JeanSteinhardtConsulting.com for more tips and tricks.

Seriously? A Series of Tips on Setting Up a Research Library (Part 10)

“The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.” -- Oliver Wendell Holmes (American Physician, Poet, Writer, Humorist and Professor at Harvard, 1809-1894)

 

ADDENDUM: DOCUMENT ACQUISITION

Access to databases is important.  Access to the full text of articles identified by your researchers is even more important.

 

Access to full text is a complex issue.  Even if your organization subscribes to ScienceDirect, for example, your access is likely to be to a subset of the entire database.  When a researcher finds an article that resides in an unsubscribed portion of the database, you will need to pay for access to the full text of that article.

 

If you are a solo act, this is not much of a problem.  You just enter your credit card number and download the article.

 

If, however, you operate within a corporate structure, the process becomes more complicated.  In this post, we offer some shopping tips for your situation.  But first, here is a concrete example of what you no doubt have encountered.

 

A Google® Scholar search for biodesulfurization produces the following four results, among others:

 

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Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, March 2013, Volume 97, Issue 5, pp 2193-2200

Kinetic analysis of biodesulfurization of model oil containing multiple alkyl dibenzothiophenes

Shi-Han Zhang, Han Chen, Wei Li

Institute of Environmental Engineering, Zhejiang University, Zijingang Campus, Hangzhou, 310058, China

source: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00253-012-4048-6#

Purchase on Springer.com: $39.95

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Advanced Materials Research, 825, 508 (2013), Pages 508-511, DOI 10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.825.508

Influences of pH Buffers on the Growth of Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans and Biodesulfurization Efficiency

Xiao Rong Liu, Chang Su, Sheng Cai Jiang, Yan Jun Liu, Hui Li

source: http://www.scientific.net/AMR.825.508

Purchase on www.scientific.net: $28.00

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International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation, Volume 86, Part C, January 2014, Pages 343–348

Taguchi optimization of dibenzothiophene biodesulfurization by Rhodococcus erythropolis R1 immobilized cells in a biphasic system

P. Derikvand (a), Z. Etemadifar (a), D. Biria (b)

a Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Isfahan, Hezarjarib St., 81746-73441 Isfahan, Iran

b Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Advanced Sciences and Technology, University of Isfahan, Hezarjarib St., 81746-73441 Isfahan, Iran

source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964830513003612

Purchase on ScienceDirect: $35.95

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Petroleum Science and Technology, Volume 31, Issue 21, 2013, pages 2250-2257

A Two-stage Immobilized Cell Bioreactor With Bacillus subtilis and Rhodococcus erythropolis for the Simultaneous Production of Biosurfactant and Biodesulfurization of Model Oil

A. Amin (a), S. A. Bazaid (b) & M. Abd El-Halim (c)

a Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Science , Taif University , Taif , Saudi Arabia

b Department of Biology, Faculty of Science , Taif University , Taif , Saudi Arabia

c Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science , Taif University , Taif , Saudi Arabia

source: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10916466.2011.565292

Purchase on Taylor & Francis: $46.00

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Here we have four articles from four different vendors requiring four different transactions.  Again, if you are working solo, this is not such a problem.  But if you are working in a corporate environment, you have to contend with two conflicting imperatives.  They are:

 

• Cost control
• Efficient delivery

 

Here is a structure which works well in many corporations …

 

To ensure cost control, designate two individuals within your corporate unit to act as gatekeepers for document acquisition. One of the two individuals can serve as the primary approver.  The other can serve as an alternate in case the primary is not available for some reason.  A researcher who needs an article can contact one or the other of these two individuals to request purchase of an article.  The request can be approved or denied. If approved, the approver forwards the request for purchase.

 

To ensure efficient delivery, two individuals should be designated as authorized users of one (or two) corporate credit cards.  One of the two individuals can serve as the primary purchaser. The other can serve as an alternate in case the primary is not available for some reason.

 

There are other approaches, as well.  Document Delivery: Best Practices and Vendor Scorecard – 2012 Update

(http://info.reprintsdesk.com/Portals/28841/docs/outselldocdel-rd.pdf ) provides an excellent overview of the approaches taken by a variety of organizations.

 

It also lists the major suppliers of document delivery services. I highly recommend reading and studying this document.  Remarkably, it is available for download at no charge.

 

Visit www.JeanSteinhardtConsulting.com for more tips and tricks.

 

 

 

 

Seriously? A Series of Tips on Setting Up a Research Library (Part 9)

“Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth.” -- Henry Ward Beecher (Liberal US Congregational minister, 1813-1887)

MONITORING DATBASE USE
Promoting use of your subscribed databases, the topic of our previous post, demands creativity and continuing commitment.  But how can you tell if your efforts are producing results?  The answer is usage statistics, provided by your vendor(s).

By monitoring usage statistics, you can determine (a) the effectiveness of your promotion efforts, and (b) whether or not to continue to subscribe to any given database.

Ask your vendor about how you can access usage statistics.  Better yet, before signing a contract, be sure to add the following clause to the contract:

The licensor confirms to the licensee that usage statistics covering the online usage of the products covered by this licence will be provided. The licensor further confirms that such usage statistics will adhere to the specifications of the COUNTER Code of Practice, including data elements collected and their definitions; data processing guidelines; usage report content, format, frequency and delivery method.
Source: Release 4 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for e-Resources (Published April 2012) (http://www.projectcounter.org/)

COUNTER stands for Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources. According to the COUNTER Web site, it “is an international initiative serving librarians, publishers and intermediaries by setting standards that facilitate the recording and reporting of online usage statistics in a consistent, credible and compatible way.”

COUNTER standards also are sensitive to privacy issues, as delimited below …

7.4.1 Privacy and user confidentiality
Statistical reports or data that reveal information about individual users will not be released or sold by vendors without the permission of that individual user, the consortium, and its member institutions (ICOLC Guidelines, October 2006)
7.4.2 Institutional or Consortia Confidentiality
Vendors do not have the right to release or sell statistical usage information about specific institutions or the consortium without permission, except to the consortium administrators and other member libraries, and to the original publisher and copyright holder of the content. Use of institutional or consortium data as part of an aggregate grouping of similar institutions for purposes of comparison does not require prior permission as long as specific institutions or consortia are not identifiable. When required by contractual agreements, vendors may furnish institutional use data to the content providers. (Based on ICOLC Guidelines, October 2006).

The COUNTER Web site includes examples of each report specified in the standards. 

It also provides a Register of Vendors providing usage reports compliant with Release 4 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for e-Resources (http://www.projectcounter.org/compliantvendors.html)

Visit the site (http://www.projectcounter.org/) for details.

Visit www.jeansteinhardtconsulting.com for more tips and tricks.

Seriously? A Series of Tips on Setting Up a Research Library (Part 8)

"To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub" -- In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet

 

PROMOTING DATBASE USE: The Three S’s

OK, so you have identified the databases your researchers will need, and you’ve negotiated favorable terms to provide access to these databases. Breathe a sigh of relief.  But only one sigh, please, because your work is not yet done.

 

The next step is to make your people aware of the information products, and to encourage them to use the products. Experienced librarians can tell you that the mere availability of these products does not guarantee their use. If your researchers don’t take advantage of the vast array of information offered by these products, you might as well save some money by cancelling your subscriptions.

 

In “Turning ‘Cold Sellers’ Into ‘Must Haves’: Marketing Unsought Library Products,” Julie Badger of Swinburne University of Technology provides a framework for tackling this problem. She writes …

 

“The 2003 OCLC environmental scan: pattern recognition” indicates that library users value “self-service, satisfaction and seamlessness” and that ease of use, convenience and availability are more important than information quality or trustworthiness.

Source: http://conferences.alia.org.au/alia2008/papers/pdfs/320.TT.pdf

 

Self-Service

Self-service is easy.  Every major purveyor of information designs its system for ease of use.  Once a researcher has been made aware of its existence, using the product will follow, as long as it leads to …

 

Satisfaction

If your researcher is dissatisfied with the results of his/her search, he/she will not continue to use the product.  If you have selected the right products, satisfaction will follow.

 

Seamlessness

Aye, there’s the rub!

 

People are used to the ease of Googling. The more hoops an end user has to jump through, the less likely he/she is to use an information product.

 

Requiring a searcher to logon to a product in order to search it is a common hurdle that discourages use.

 

Bibliographic databases like Compendex pose another challenge.  Compendex is tremendously useful in identifying useful articles, but the fact that a searcher then has to go elsewhere to obtain the full text of the articles may discourage use of the product.

 

Regarding bibliographic databases, Badger has this to say …

 

Finally there are the “dogs”, products with a subordinate share of the market and low prospects for growth. Sometimes we need to make the tough decision to euthanize these “dogs”. Into this category I would put all the index/abstract-only databases unless there is a very real possibility that they will provide full text soon.

 

I wouldn’t go that far.  But it is very difficult to persuade busy researchers to take the extra time required to mine the benefits of such products. 

 

Time, as they say, is of the essence.  If you can persuade your end users that using the subscribed databases will actually SAVE them time, you are half way there to ensuring that they will be used.

 

The best thing you can do is to talk to some of your researchers.  Ask them to give you a few topics to research for them.  Do the research, and show them the results. Then show them how you got those results. Some of them will take the bit and run with it.  Others will prefer you to do their online searching for them.  Either way, your organization wins.

 

For larger organizations, this sort of one on one approach may not be sufficient.  In this case, you will want to use some of the media used by academic librarians to promote the use of subscribed databases.  They include …

 

• Information literacy sessions
• Induction sessions
• In person instruction
• e-mails
• Posters
• Committee meetings
• Events
• Newsletters
• Flyers
• Social Media Tools, such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Wikis, Online groups/forums, Blogging

Remember, for more tips and tricks, visit www.jeansteinhardtconsulting.com