| |
Written by Nigel Lees
 This article describes the journey the Royal
Society of Chemistry (RSC) Library has taken from being a very traditional
learned society library to its transformation as a virtual electronic resource
for nearly 45,000 members worldwide. Most notably, it practically jumped from
print to remote-access without bothering with the on-site access phase.
From small beginnings in 2004, the RSC
Virtual Library has grown to include:
- 235 full-text e-journals from Elsevier and Springer
- 1445 e-books from (Knovel, Springer, Elsevier, NetLibrary)
- Millions of full-text articles from over 3,600 journals in
Ebsco's aggregated full-text databases
- 8 databases in chemistry, business, the environment, general
science, TOCs and news
- Specific chemistry databanks and compilations
- Pre-paid download tokens from Elsevier and Wiley to supplement
full-text.
Early
days
The RSC Library has an excellent, quasi-national,
collection of print journals and books on every aspect of chemical sciences and
has always been keen to keep up to date with the latest resources and access
technology. However it became apparent
in the late 1990s that usage was dropping off
Although the number of enquiries had held up very well, members didn't seem to visit in quite the
numbers it had before. There could be
many reasons for this:
- Good access to chemical information in most universities and
large companies
- Increasing electronic access to databases and later to full
text
- Multidisciplinary nature of research; universities had much
broader coverage
- The Library was perceived as being too far away and
`London-centric'
- Researchers seem less inclined to travel to specialist
libraries.
The declining number of physical visits
plus the spiralling costs of chemistry journals led to inevitable questions
over the purpose of the Library and whether the RSC could get better value for
money. After a successful survey of
members and two major reviews of the Library, a decision was made in 2002, to
seek a more remote-access approach to members information needs. Members were very supportive of the Library -
they just wanted better access.
Many RSC members work in higher education
and were well aware of remote-access. Although the RSC is the largest
independent supporter and funder of chemical education in the UK and
accredits most degree courses, it is not a university and does not benefit from
JISC mediated deals on electronic resources.
How then were we to facilitate access to premium licensed content?
In short, how could we progress from being
a print-based library to being a virtual library?
So
what was the problem?
Publishers were not sure what to make of us
at first. We were not an academic
library, not a public library, not an industrial library and were independently
funded by our learned society primarily for the use of its membership, though
in practice we have been very welcoming to many user groups (subject to certain
collection and service restrictions). Still,
we had a clear mandate from our members and senior management to seek better
value for money, especially from our journals budget. Because of our large, distributed membership,
publishers were concerned over:
Loss of control of electronic material
- Potential loss of revenue
- Lack of suitable licensing models.
In addition publishers had, at that time,
little experience with remote-access to membership organisations and barely
understood the functions of such societies. One of the first things we had to
do was communicate who we were, what societies do, that most were registered
charities and have strong educational roles. Just as importantly, most societies were also
quite different. The RSC, for example, has a strong industrial base with many
thousands of members working in small companies as well as larger ones.
With this lack of understanding of what
societies and their libraries do plus the publishers' wariness, we knew that
remote-access was not going to be easy.
It was at this point that we decided to redirect our budget from on-site
resources to remote-access resources.
This was a gradual process of cutting journal expenditure (high priced
but little used) and buying suitable remote-access resources able to be used by
all the membership.
First
steps
Initially, we tried to work with Elsevier and
Wiley, two leading chemistry publishers, and discussions started in 2002. However, it wasn't until 2008 that we finally
got a result with one of them, Elsevier (more on this later). However our first
service to members was the Knovel Library of e-books and encyclopaedias which launched
in March 2004.
Knovel was a good start for us for a number
of reasons: it was innovative and a relatively new supplier at the time. They had
worked with some societies in the USA
and understood our issues and had already worked successfully with the
Institution of Mechanical Engineers in the UK.. It was our remote-access development with
Knovel that specifically drove the creation of secure membership-only web pages
for the RSC. Knovel provided all members,
for the first time, with an integrated search engine where they could get text and
data from key reference books.
This success led the way for others:
e-books via NetLibrary, followed by our first resource from Elsevier, ChemVillage,
which gave members Chemical Business NewsBase and Chimica (chemical engineering
and process database).
Next were databases from Ebsco. Three of
these databases contained aggregated full-text items on business, general
science and the environment. The others
are news databases and Tables of Content.
It rapidly became obvious, as if we didn't
know anyway, that chemists were interested in subjects much wider than chemical
sciences. Many were running small
businesses with little or no access to premium resources, so the full-text and
data offered by the RSC Library was a very welcome support for them. Much of
the use of these resources seems to come from members in less well-resourced smaller
companies/institutions and freelancers. Although we are able to facilitate
access to considerable resources it still falls well short of the resources
offered by larger companies and academic institutions, thus some of the
publishers' fears seem to be allayed.
The
home run
The RSC Virtual Library has so far seen
excellent growth from 2007 to 2008. In 2007 in a groundbreaking deal with
Springer, the RSC became their first society remote-access customer of
full-text journals, with the purchase of 127 titles (many with permanent
archival access back to volume 1) and 500 e-books. This was in their Chemistry and Materials
Collection and was immediately appreciated by RSC members worldwide.
Elsevier, as mentioned earlier, had been
discussing these issues with us since 2002 and, although sympathetic, were not
yet willing to commit. However, a few
society librarians contacted Content Complete, an agency specialising in
content rights management in 2004. They were able to open up alternative
approaches with Elsevier. Content Complete was able to negotiate a suitable
deal for societies which the RSC and the Geological Society (our neighbours)
took up after lengthy trials. As a result, the RSC Virtual Library now has 108
journals in the Elsevier chemistry archive and 15 current titles, plus an extra
304 e-books.
Where
to now?
RSC Library staff now run training courses for
members to help them search the Virtual Library better. Later in 2008 we hope
to produce webinars on the Virtual Library for members and develop specific
web-based tutorials.
Despite all this `free' information for
members, we still have to engage in a lot of promotion to ensure that the very
good usage statistics are maintained. We
are developing a federated search engine and an A-Z list of all resources as
well as, hopefully, getting more full text and data. On the back of the Virtual Library we have
started providing regular digests of information on, for example, biofuels, climate
change and hydrogen fuel cells. An ‘Enquiry/Resource of the Month' highlights
membership resources and how to use them.
Perhaps one of the biggest changes in our
160 years of service is a major redevelopment of the physical Library to form a
Chemistry Centre (opening July/August 2009) with facilities for conferences,
meeting and events as well as retaining a world class Library and virtual
resource. The story behind this will have to wait for another time...
Nigel Lees has been
working at the Royal Society of Chemistry since 1994 and from 1999 as Manager
Library & Archival Services. Prior to this, he was Chemistry Subject
Specialist at the British Library. He has also worked as an information
officer in the pharmaceutical industry and in the consultancy Burgoyne and
Partners, specialising in the investigation of fire, chemical and explosion incidents.
From 1986-88 he worked in Egypt
for VSO in a training and advisory role at the University of Assiut. Contact him at library@rsc.org;
020 7440 3371, http://www.rsc.org/library.
Related Links:
Other FUMSI stories related to this one:
Online Digital Special Collections in Engish Universities: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/share/2692
EthOS: A New Start for Doctoral Theses in the UK: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/manage/2490
![[Get Copyright Permissions]](http://license.icopyright.net/images/icopy-w.gif "[Get Copyright Permissions]")
Click here for copyright permissions!
Copyright 2008 Free Pint Ltd.
You may also be interested in:
|
