Technology and e-journal management: the practical impact on library and information industry stakeholders

Jay Glaisyer, managing director, SwetsBlackwell

Introduction - where I'm coming from
Setting the scene
- Environment 1 - who are the stakeholders
- Environment 2 - e-journal issues and impact
- Environment 3 - industry trends
- Environment 4 - anything else
What's working well
What's not working well
What if...
Strategies for collaboration, current and future
Questions - over to you

Responsibility and balance
Today's focus - collaboration strategies
How can we all survive and thrive into the future
How best to make use of our respective strengths, identify our core business, work together
What do we do well:
- Staff - dependable, informed
- Systems
- Relationships
- Historical expertise
- Financial stability
- Core business versus diversity
- Investment in the future
- Vision, innovative
- More...?

Over 20 per cent titles handled by Swets have e component
ANZ - pilot market, early adopter
Content primarily science, technology, medicine (STM) but not for long
Publisher price increases
Consortia pricing models
Flexibility of content
Surcharges
Delivery methods
Current awareness - what's out there, differentiating (service and content)
E is simpler (!)
Temptation to go direct
Expectation of more for less
Need for increasingly sophisticated management and searching tools/access methods
Changing relationships
Space and storage issues: archiving, back access
Remote users - does e content meet their needs
'Human resources' - skills, training, staff development, roles and responsibilities
Collection development/management

Source: Swets Blackwell 2003 E-journal survey - copies can be purchased

Intermediaries reinventing themselves, investing in e management tools, promoting their added value
All players questioning their particular value in the information chain, examining their core business and their strengths
Libraries collaborating, levying purchasing power by forming consortia, sharing resources and ideas
Libraries looking seriously at outsourcing options
Negotiation with publishers for more e content, flexibility of pricing
Publishers realizing reality of the e world - pricing, flexibility, workload
Formal service level agreements, organized purchasing via tender, centralized technical services/acquisitions

Agents disappear completely
Libraries disappear completely
Libraries absorb libraries
Publishers continue with the big deal approach and libraries continue to support this
E only - fact or fiction
We are left with only three big publishers...

Publishers coming full circle and looking to agents to manage back-office and administration and offer customer service
Library consortia looking to intermediaries to manage complexity of e content licensing and consortia negotiation - global experience, historical relationships, sophisticated systems, and holistic vision
Each player looking at the core business and strengths of the other and beginning to utilize these to their own advantage
Change in expectations - agents do not offer their services for free!
Librarians willing to 'let go' and develop long-term business partnerships with third parties with agreed services and service levels
Each player recognising their responsibility to the industry and the future viability of the others
Intermediaries seeing publishers as customers and clearly identifying and branding services to this community as well as to libraries (our traditional customers)
Long-term strategic planning
Industry forums to discuss strategic planning across all stakeholders