Dear Linda,

Thank you so much for your efforts, and for sharing this with the group.  I can say that we also suffered from the Wiley takeover.  All of our subscriptions used to be with Blackwell.  During the transition stage we tried and tried to get decent customer service to explain some of the pricing and access options that would be available to us should we choose to stay with them as a client.  In the end, it was so hard to get anyone to even answer questions directly, let alone in a timely manner, that we switched all the subscriptions to an Ebsco Agent and moved them to Online Only to make up for the money we were losing from this transition, and also because that's the way we're trying to move our users anyway.

As far as them considering you a multi-site license and forcing you into an EAL, as well as the rigid nature of the EAL in general, it is all just so evil and unethical.  I am sorry if this doesn't come off as the most professional response. I am fairly new in the serials game and the customer service from vendors has just struck me as so horrible that it has reached this place where I see it as more bizarre than anything else, perhaps as an effort ot avoid getting angry on a daily basis. :)

The huge problem we have right now, to which we have been waiting for a response from Ebsco for over two weeks now, who has clearly passed the question on to Wiley and put us in a waiting game, is that by moving to Online Only subscriptions, but having a Basic, instead of Enhanced License, we have NO ACCESS TO USAGE DATA!!!!  That's right, we have online only subscriptions, but absolutely no way of knowing if our users are even accessing the subscriptions we are purchasing for them.  It is the most ridiculous "rule" I have ever heard of and can only have been put into place to try and force clients into the Enhanced Access License.  Unfortunately, Ebsco didn't know enough about this to inform us when they presented us with their offer, so we made the switch and now, are just hoping there is something we can do to rectify the situation.  I have no idea what that will be.  Has anyone else run into this problem?

Again, Linda thanks for sharing this.  I am 100% behind you.

Best regards,

Carly Bachman

Associate Librarian
Hernán Santa Cruz Library
United Nations - ECLAC
Santiago, Chile
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 15:07:34 -0500
From: LAHULBERT@STTHOMAS.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Wiley EAL license
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU

Dear Serialists (please excuse the multiple postings)

 

Another company is looking at the Elsevier model and using it.  Unfortunately, unlike Elsevier where a library might get more content than they could pay for and unlike Elsevier which does not require that a library participate, Wiley is requiring all multi-site libraries to have a no-cancellation, minimum life time spend.  Add insult to injury, we are not a multi-site library by any other vendor’s definition!  But Wiley has designated us so. Without recourse. 

 

So, I am sending this letter to many people at Wiley and in the library community. Please, help resist these kinds of publisher practices.

 

 

*****

 

I am writing to you today in your capacity as someone concerned with [higher education, customer service] at John Wiley and Sons.  

 

Wiley provides an EAL license which has three major features: two year agreement, a guaranteed minimum spend (no cancellations without adding titles) (ala Elsevier) and, for that ‘lock-in,’ libraries will have a cap on the annual inflationary increases. Wiley requires multi-site libraries – which they have declared we are – enter into an EAL license for electronic journal content.

 

We have two problems with this rigid requirement:

 

1.     Wiley is now treating my university as a multi-campus university. Let me assure you that all other vendors treat us a single site because, while we have libraries in Minneapolis and St. Paul, we have a single IP address, single president, and a single Accounts Payable for all campuses (including Rome which has 4 seminarians studying abroad!).

 

2.     The EAL license is required for all online journal content we purchase from Wiley/Blackwell in 2010. Currently, our online-only spend is about $3,000, our print +online is over $33,000, and our total spend is about $66,000 for journal content with Wiley.  What does that mean for the University of St. Thomas?  We would not be able to cancel – i.e. lower our ‘current’ spend. That means that as tuition dollars dry up, as the university’s contribution to the libraries shrink, we cannot cancel titles in the Wiley contract. It’s ironic that while we would be locked into a multi-year contract during these incredibly unpredictable and difficult financial times, Wiley could change their title list at will – buying or selling titles as the market dictates.

 

We have spoken with your representative, Diane Conroy, and there are no alternatives IF we want online journal content from Wiley. She is adamant.

 

Hence, our only option is to cancel all of our online content. I assume that is not Wiley’s goal but the only one we see available to us since we cannot agree to a multi-year, dollar spend commitment.  We will cancel what we can – I can see about $30,000 in cancellations (27 titles) without too much pain. We will purchase print-only in the cases where we have had print +online and we will cancel our online-only and move back to print-only.  As we all know, even good content that is print-only will become marginalized by our users and as it does, we’ll easily be able to justify canceling the remaining print titles. And, of course, we will not be purchasing new journal content from Wiley.

 

When September comes, if we have no agreement with Wiley for 2010 permitting cancellation and permitting single year subscriptions, we will have to take these draconian steps.

 

I will be sharing this letter with the Wiley board of directors, others in Wiley management, the serials community, the licensing community and other colleagues in the library community.

 

Thank you for your attention.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

CC:

Warren J. Baker, President

  California Polytechnic State University

Bonnie Lieberman,

  Senior Vice-President for Higher Education

  John Wiley and Sons

Clifford Kline, Senior Vice-President

  Customer Service and Distribution

  John Wiley and Sons

 

******************************************

Linda

Linda Hulbert, Associate Director 
        Collection Management and Services
O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library #5004
University of Saint Thomas
2115 Summit Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55105
Phone: (651) 962-5016         Fax: (651) 962-5486        email: lahulbert@stthomas.edu 

The journal article you find is the journal article you were looking for

 


Insert movie times and more without leaving Hotmail®. See how.