"I guess you have to get into the tunnel, before you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think this is what the next two years will be like." Susan Vaughn, Associate Librarian for Collection Development
 

We live in a global environment where students and faculty expect near instantaneous access to the news and information of the world. The Library still serves as a storehouse and sanctuary, but it is also the gateway to the realm of digital information. When one counts all the individual titles available through aggregators' products (Lexis/Nexis, Wilson Omni-File) Brooklyn College readers have access to more than 7,000 different electronic resources--journals, magazines, newsletters, wire services, and so forth.
 

Internet Products
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/elecjnls.htm

"In the case of aggregators like Lexis or Academic ASAP, one cannot be certain of how long the sources will remain in the product. Many publishers pulled out of Lexis before we had the resource for a month, and we had to re-evaluate our cancellation plans, re-instating many titles." Susan Vaughn, Associate Librarian for Collection Development
 

"The only thing that is certain is that we will need an increased materials budget in order to support the electronic library. We will be getting more, but we will be paying more. And the pricing model will not always be to our liking." Susan Vaughn, Associate Librarian for Collection Development
 

"Although there are a lot of free sites and resources, scholarly electronic resources will not be inexpensive. This will have great budgetary impact. As publishers work out pricing models the one sure thing is that electronic will not be less expensive than print." Susan Vaughn, Associate Librarian for Collection Development
 

"There are as many cost models for electronic information as there are electronic providers. A recent article identified sixteen different approaches." Susan Vaughn, Associate Librarian for Collection Development
 

Trends in Internet Resources

The Library continues to provide access to a dozen CD-ROM resources (in addition to the hundreds of federal publications received on CD). However, Internet resources are the clear trend.

Among 1997-1998's major themes were:

• Expanding access to Web-based journals and reference tools
• Creating greater visibility for E-resources

• We set the Library home page as the default on every Web-browsing machine in the building and moved the button for E-resources to the top of the page.
• A list of all the journal titles contained in each suite of titles was added to the page.
• Catalog records for the various journals were added to the online catalog.
• A proxy server at the University's Manhattan computer center provided off-site access to centrally-funded E-titles; this expanded access increased the popularity of these collections.
• Software that allows us to embed passwords, rather than keying them in for each search, also improved access.

Digital Collections

Among the resources in our digital collection are:

Academic Lexis/Nexis Universe
More than 7,000 magazines, journals, newspapers, news wires, and transcripts

Academic ASAP
Full-text periodical product

Academic Chemical Society
25 ACS journals

EB Online (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Health Reference Center
Full-text resources, including pamphlet material, in the health sciences

Math/Sci Net
The electronic version of Mathematical Reviews

Project MUSE
45 journals from the Johns Hopkins University

STAT-USA
A government publications product

Wilson Omni-File
400 full-text journals
 

Pricing Models

Lexis/Nexis offers a good example of the nascent nature of electronic publishing. After the Library paid its share of the University-negotiated subscription price (predicated on a given suite of publishers and titles) two prominent publishers of academic reference materials withdrew their titles. Initially, Brooklyn paid $7,000 for Lexis/Nexis, planning to cancel $5,000 in print titles for which it would provide electronic coverage. In the end, we were able to cancel only $2,500 because of the publisher drop-outs, yet the rebate we received on our $7,000 was small.

The role the University plays in providing students and faculty access to Internet resources is significant. Cost models vary:

• In some cases, the University pays the entire cost for a resource.
• In others, it and the campuses cost-share products.
• Sometimes the central office negotiates a good price for a product, then the campuses pay the entire bill.

Whatever the model, the benefit Brooklyn has enjoyed is considerable, valued at at least $40,000 during the 1997-1998 academic year. The CUNY Council of Chief Librarians is presently developing a collection development policy for digital materials, following models developed by other large university systems.

The flexibility and access offered by E-resources is attractive. At the same time, we are mindful that no one is yet offering electronic titles at prices lower than those for print--in fact, electronic titles typically cost more. As yet libraries and researchers have no guarantee that electronic archiving will become publishers' practice, and no model for retention of backfiles has emerged. Aggregators (companies that assemble and license groups of titles from a variety of publishers) routinely drop and add titles: when a key title is suddenly pulled from the package by its publisher, libraries scramble to acquire backfiles, from other sources. If not in their infancy, E-resources are certainly experiencing the "terrible twos," and many key issues are yet to be resolved.