Hi Tian – we exploring a limited number of Science Direct pay-per-view tokens and have been compiling a list of questions to consider – they look very much like yours. So in answer to your first question—yes, there are other libraries doing what you are doing!

Regarding your other questions:

We have decided to include our “token” titles in Serials Solutions list, so our users (and librarians) see them as available.

We are currently NOT mediating the use of tokens. This is a test. We are going to evaluate use as we go, looking at how quickly the tokens are being used; what journals they are used for, etc.

We understand that this test may lead us to decide we should mediate token use, but right now we are trying this route.

If you want to mediate use of tokens, you can create a public note (that appears in the Serials Solutions A-Z list and/or the MARC record) that makes your users aware that they should “see a librarian”. However, that information appears several clicks before they get to the article – so we thought a lot of users would miss it.

Looking forward to hearing from others on this. We don’t know how much testing we would need to do to feel ready to cancel subscribed titles and switch entirely to PPT for a given content provider, but that may be where we are headed.

Hope this helps –

Jane

Jane Lawless

Electronic Resources and Serials Librarian

Levin Memorial Library

Curry College

1071 Blue Hill Avenue

Milton MA 02186

(617) 333-2245 (voice)

(617) 333-2164 (fax)

jlawless@curry.edu

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Tian Zhang
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 3:47 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Token subscriptions for online articles instead of online journal titles - how do you manage this kind of subscription?

Because of several reasons, this year we canceled some package subscriptions and canceled some online titles with low usage statistics as well. Instead, we subscribe tokens in order to provide our patrons with online full texts upon their requests. Tokens can be used to all the journals published by this publisher we bought tokens from. But to manage this kind of subscription, I have some questions:

Are there other libraries doing the same thing as we do?
If you also subscribe tokens instead of titles, how do you treat these titles – as your subscribed titles listed in your Serials Solutions or do not list them at all?
If you do not list the titles in your e-journals collection, how do you let your library users know they are part of your subscription which can be accessed by asking for?
How do you manage the use of the tokens – not controlled by librarians at all? Or be fully controlled by librarians of which department, ILL or Serials Dept?

You may send email to me directly to discuss it if you prefer. Thanks in advance.

Tian Zhang

Serials Department

St. John's University Library

8000 Utopia Parkway

Queens, NY 11439

Tel. 718 990-5082

Fax. 718 990-5938

Email: zhangt@stjohns.edu