Just curious!

[Lynn H. Veach]

Basically COST AND USE/ distance from users AND MASS ACCESSIBILITY---
1. Depending on the subject field ( as in sicience) right now the paper is
generally cheaper for institutional subscirptions and the electronic site
license is additional from a minimal fee for Science ($12.00 to a large
additional fee like Jouranl of Biological Chemistry $1000 more just short
of doubling the paper copy). Also site licencing can be very costlly. I
believe electronic journal cost will come down within the next 5 yrs making
them more attractive than the paper.

2.  Use---how many users read/ utilize the item-- essentially cost comes
down with each use--ALSO how spread out is your organization.  Ours is
spread out over a 45 mile radius and electronic is more attractive if you
do not have to travel 45 miles to see the hard copy.

3.  Mass Accessibility --  WEB interfaces are generally very slow during
prime work day time--not everyone can have the state of the art PC every
year----everyone must have access to a shared high speed printer printing
at a regular printer to a PC consumes too much of the users time and is
very costlly and not the best use of their time-- and in a shared PC such
as a public terminal it ties up the PC when someone else could be using
it... Note:  site licences are usually IP address protected and this could
cause some problems if a person trys to access their institutional
subscription/services from their homes.

4. Online- Citation services are more useful electronically but cost to an
instutuion once you open it up for searching via the web can be
unpredictable and unexpected and unmanageable by the time you get the bill
for what your users search ( to them it is free) and with declining budgets
is it better to be overspent at the end of the FY or is it better to cut
the service off and on as you can put up a wad of money to cover what they
search--neither is particularlly attractive to me...but then what is the
ultimate solution??


At 11:00 PM 4/28/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Hi, 
>
>Just curious!
>
>How can we evaluate a new electronic information product?
>
>How to compare and contrast the process of evaluation of a paper-based
>product with that of an electronic product?
>
>Thanks!
>
>


Lynn H. Veach
CAT at ornl.gov
Lockheed Martin Energy Research
ORNL Research Libraries
Life Sciences Library
POB 2009
Bldg 9224 MS 8079
Oak Ridge, Tn 37831-8079
(423) 574-1241  FAX (423) 574-1240


------- End of Forwarded Message


Lynn H. Veach
CAT at ornl.gov
Lockheed Martin Energy Research
ORNL Research Libraries
Life Sciences Library
POB 2009
Bldg 9224 MS 8079
Oak Ridge, Tn 37831-8079
(423) 574-1241  FAX (423) 574-1240