Inaugural meeting of the IngentaConnect Library Advisory Board
We would like to extend a big thank-you to those members of our Library Advisory Board who joined us for its inaugural meeting during the Charleston Conference in November 2006. The Board and its meetings are intended to provide Ingenta with feedback to help us improve the IngentaConnect service for libraries. The following members of the Board were in attendance and contributed a great deal of insight during the discussions:
- Beth Bernhardt, UNC Greensboro
- Leslie Button, University of Mass.
- Jennifer Carroll, University of New Hampshire
- Kristina DeShazo, Oregon Health & Science University
- Debi Eason, Duke University
- Mary Gilbert, Towson University
- Amanda Harmon, UNC Charlotte
- Sherry Keen, Brandeis University
- Jonathan Lord, University of Virginia
- Stephanie Nicely Aken, University of Kentucky
- Tammy S. Sugarman, Georgia State University
- David B. Walsh, University of Missouri-Columbia
All attendees have involvement in electronic resources and/or acquisitions in their role, and several talked of resourcing issues which meant that they were covering more than their fair share of responsibilities. All had used Ingenta for several years, with two libraries opting for our IngentaConnect Complete enterprise package and several others making use of IngentaConnect deposit accounts to offer mediated and unmediated document delivery for users. Key issues raised during the discussions are highlighted below:
Subscriptions: numbers, renewals, purchasing
Several attendees noted that locating subscription numbers in order to activate online access is particularly problematic for libraries and that publishers and agents struggle to supply these.
- Ingenta is working with its publisher partners to reduce dependency on these numbers; in addition, institutional registry initiatives within the industry (reviewed elsewhere in this issue) are expected to go some way to alleviating this problem.
Discussion of lapsing subscriptions, and specifically about notification of them, noted that the timing of such notifications is critical - for example, the 4 months' notice given by some providers is excessive; such early notification emails are filed, forgotten about and thus useless.
- Ingenta's 7-Step Renewal Plan notifies libraries one month before graced subscriptions are due to expire. This plan, introduced to our publishers in 2005, has significantly reduced the number of queries we have received from libraries suffering incorrectly "lapsed" subscriptions - suggesting that it has gone some way to resolving the problem.
The ability for institutions to purchase subscriptions online (e.g. via providers' websites) was not something the attendees were seeking, for many reasons including:
- Agent contracts often commit the library to purchasing all their subscriptions with that agent
- Purchasing via credit card is not straightforward for librarians
- Licenses need to be reviewed and signed
- Libraries are already paying their agent for this service
Library Branding
All our attendees felt it was important for libraries to be able to add branding to pages visited by their users with, ideally, a link to the library website. Such branding not only reminds users of the library's role in enabling their access to online content, but also supports the library in justifying its budget internally. Library promotion is an increasingly big issue in the age of decreasing investment in library budgets. Our attendees also advised that branding on the article, appearing on downloaded and printed copies, would be useful, and noted that consistency across different vendors would be a bonus here.
- IngentaConnect Premium provides tools for administrators to apply branding to IngentaConnect pages
- We are developing software to "watermark" articles with details of the subscription by which it was downloaded.
Performance
Our attendees did note that IngentaConnect had recently suffered from poor performance, and following their feedback our core engineering team carried out a series of investigations into why performance should be so adversely affected. This work resulted in a marked improvement which was noted during follow-up discussions with Board members. Any librarian experiencing problems with IngentaConnect performance is always invited to contact us with details so that we can investigate and resolve the problem.
Availability of Ingenta materials
Whilst some attendees were familiar with this newsletter, many were not aware of Ingenta's All My Eye blog or, perhaps more importantly, the ResourceZone area of IngentaConnect which provides librarians with user guides, "how to" tips, analysis of key industry issues, promotional materials (posters, logos, email templates) and much more.
Comparison of Ingenta to other e-journal hosts
In comparison to other e-journal hosts, attendees praised IngentaConnect for a number of features including:
- Clear and accurate access icons (which indicate to which content the current user has access rights)
- Centralised hosting (10,000 e-publications presented through the same interface rather than separate sub-sites)
- Consolidated registration information (no need to register separately for different publishers)
One attendee noted that Ingenta espouses "a real sense of earnestness and a desire to do more for the user. I don’t feel that Ingenta is trying to dictate to us or stand on a pedestal."
Thank-you again to all those who took part. Engaging our library customers is critical to enabling us to continue developing our services to meet your needs and solve your problems. We welcome feedback from all our library customers - please do email us at help@ingenta.com with any thoughts you'd like to share.