This alumni concern pops up from time to time. I know these publishers don't want extra wear and tear on their servers, but how many alumni make such requests in any given year? Most licenses allow for Interlibrary Loan these days. I don't quite understand why the ILL person won't work with this researcher on this one article. If nothing else, it would seem the researcher could submit an interlibrary loan request through the nearest public library, and then it would be a legitimate ILL transaction. It's a shame that this alum's personal subscription does not include the item he needs! We run into this problem occasionally with articles that are co-published. (I don't suppose your license allows for walk-ins?)
We certainly don't want to violate our license agreements, but there have to be times when there is
some kind of work-around. As if we're not paying these publishers gobs of money already!
--
Sarah Tusa, Associate Professor
Coordinator of Collection Development
& Acquisitions
Mary & John Gray Library
Lamar University
Ext. 8125
From: "Karen S. Bolton" <bolton@MSOE.EDU>
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 9:19:36 AM
Subject: [SERIALST] conference article off limits to alum
Hello,
Yesterday, an alum from our university came in to borrow three 1990s articles from our print IEEE journals. He is a member of IEEE himself and has an IEEE Xplore membership that did not allow him access to these articles in his version
of IEEE Xplore. He paid for these as interlibrary loans.
He was also looking for a 1991 conference, that has been heavily cited, which he thinks is crucial for his research. It is available in our IEEE Xplore, but our license limits its use to only our own faculty, staff and students. Our ILL
person is firm that we cannot send him this article.
It does not seem fair that this researcher should not get his article. The ILL person is telling him he might be able to obtain the article directly from IEEE for whatever they charge.
Has anyone negotiated terms with IEEE that would include access to alumni?
I’m not really looking for advice, I guess. Just complaining.
Karen Bolton
Serials Librarian
bolton@msoe.edu
Milwaukee School of Engineering
Walter Schroeder Library
1025 N. Broadway
Milwaukee, WI
53202-3109