Hi Pam and Everyone,
Just wanted to chime in on this thread - We divide our business between all three major vendors (EBSCO, Swets, and Harrassowitz), believing that we would like all three companies to remain viable since competition in the marketplace is a healthy thing. Each vendor's system has features that we find particularly useful (such as information on perpetual access, ip authentication, payment information etc.), and we make heavy use of their systems to help in our daily processing of claims, invoices, and setting up of e-access. When we did our initial split, the vendors offered barcodes to help us change vendor information in our system and add things like subscription IDs, etc.
A couple of thoughts on the transfer process: the former vendor should not
cancel your subscriptions, but should instead
not renew them with the publisher. If the publisher sees a cancellation, we found that often they did not connect the renewal that was coming from the new vendor to the former subscription, which resulted in a lapse of e-access.
As much as possible, you should indicate on your transfer list where you already had e-access established. We found that all three vendors picked up on this information and forwarded to the publishers, so that our subscriptions from one vendor to the next were linked, and e-access was seamless. Where we ran into trouble was where the renewal was not linked so we had to claim e-access.
Hope this helps a bit!
Rebecca Martinez
Distributed Technical Services Coordinator/Serials Team Leader
Email: rannmart@rulmail.rutgers.edu
Rutgers University Libraries
Alexander Library
Distributed Technical Services
169 College Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Tel: (732) 932-7388 ext. 119
Fax: (732) 932-8141
"Forever -- is composed of Nows" - Emily Dickenson
From: "Pam Scott" <library808@GMAIL.COM>
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 5:33:06 PM
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] vendor question
Hi Roger,
Regarding your switch to Swets - what made the vendor switch smooth?
Do you think it's that the publishers are better prepared to handle
such changes or do you think it has more to do with the subscription
vendors? We switched many years ago - just when the e-access was
starting to grow - and at that time it was extremely painful. I think
our library's management of e-journals (using Serials Solutions, etc)
and by less reliance on access directly through our subscription
vendor might make a switch easier now. I would appreciate any
feedback that you could give. We are considering a switch from Swets
to Ebsco. Although we dread the process, the service we're receiving
from Swets has been poor.
Regards,
Pam Scott
Librarian
Tripler Army Medical Library
On 1/23/12, DAVIS, ROGER <rdavis@kent.edu> wrote:
> I've had the "privilege" of changing serial vendors three times in the last
> 15 years. There are good points and bad for each vendor and it depends
> somewhat on the size of your collection if one will be better for you than
> another. I will say that our last switch to SWETS was the smoothest I've
> seen. It was seamless and we had very few problems with publishers.
>
> Roger
>
> From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
> [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Coakley, Lynn
> Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 2:47 PM
> To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
> Subject: [SERIALST] vendor question
>
> hi all:
>
> A colleague at a neighboring college asked me for information about
> periodicals vendors besides Ebsco of which they are a customer. Apparently
> an audit turned up the fact that there are other vendors that are cheaper.
> Personally, I think the agony of getting titles transferred from one vendor
> to another is not worth the lesser cost, but that's my opinion.
>
> I told her I would ask this list for ideas of a different periodicals vendor
> that you love (or that you hate), I'd love to have that info.
>
> Thanks
>
> Lynn
>
> --
> Lynn Coakley
> Coordinator of Technical Services
> Library
> Springfield Technical Community College
> One Armory Sq.
> Springfield, MA 01102
> 413.755.4565
> fax 413.755.6315
>
>
--
Pam Scott, MLISc
Technical Information Specialist
Tripler Medical Library
1 Jarrett White Road
Tripler Army Medical Center, HI 96859-5000
Ph: 808.433.6391
Fx. 808.433.4892