Reading Teacher/Reading Research Quarterly Holman Jenifer S 27 Sep 2006 18:10 UTC
Here at UW-La Crosse, we have been moving many of our subscriptions from print to electronic access only, especially as electronic access is perceived as the norm now by our student users. Typically, our electronic subscriptions include a couple years of backfiles (which makes these subscriptions even more appealing). This summer, we ran into the most unusual e-only subscription that we have ever heard of and I want to make sure that you all hear of this too in case our collective voice can work to change this most distressing situation. We subscribe to Reading Research Quarterly and Reading Teacher through an International Reading Association combination package. These are popular journals at our institution so we decided last year to move both to e-only. We learned that our subscription to both titles starts in January of each year. Reading Research Quarterly begins its volume in January, but Reading Teacher begins its volume in August. While this gap was no problem in a print environment, it has become a disaster in an electronic environment. Our electronic access to Reading Teacher started with v.59, no.5 because that was the first issue published after January. No backfiles are available for purchase. I thought that we could pay extra to have electronic access to v.59, no.1-4 and was told that we could certainly do that, but that our access to v.59 would end at the beginning of v.60. That's right, an electronic only subscription to Reading Teacher and Reading Research Quarterly includes access to the current issues in your subscription year only. We do have a microfilm subscription to Reading Teacher, but with the current setup, we would be without any access to 4 issues of the current volume each year. I thought I had come up with the solution to this perplexing problem by trying to get a print+online subscription. Most publishers usually charge an extra 5%-10% for this option. The International Reading Association, however, does not offer such a deal. The only way to get print + online is to order two different subscriptions - one for print and one for electronic - paying twice for the same content. My next thought was to extend our subscription year by 6 months so that we could get on a schedule where we had access to a full volume of Reading Teacher each year. But, if we change the subscription start date for Reading Teacher, we must change it for Reading Research Quarterly as well, meaning that we'd be losing access to content from Reading Research Quarterly. There is no option to order these titles separately. My contact over at International Reading Association (http://www.reading.org/publications/journals/rt/subscribe.html) mentioned that I was not the first librarian to call and complain about their access. Yet, she did not have details about any plans to fix this irritating situation. WorldCAT lists 1,897 libraries with holdings of the Reading Teacher and 1,228 libraries with holding for Reading Research Quarterly. If your library subscribes to these titles and you are upset about the terms of their electronic access, please call the publisher and let them know. Perhaps if 1,000 librarian voices are heard, they will change more quickly. I'd also be interested in hearing how other libraries are dealing with these titles. Thanks! Jen Holman ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jenifer Holman Acquisitions Librarian Murphy Library University of Wisconsin-La Crosse 1631 Pine St. La Crosse, WI 54601 phone: 608-785-8395 fax: 608-785-8639 email: holman.jeni@uwlax.edu http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/ <http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/>