[Web4lib] Problems with Emerald Insight

[Leo Robert Klein]

So I'm trying to do my CurrentCites (which BTW is a wonderful Current 
Awareness Service edited by the renowned R. Tennant) and I see from my 
various "Emerald Alert Service Updates" a whole bunch of interesting 
articles in journals like "New Library World", "Library Management" and 
"Aslib Proceedings".

I scoot over to www.emeraldinsight.com to look them up and basically the 
online TOC's are screwed up, none of the articles show up, and the links 
don't work.  This has been the case for several days now.  Bad news, 
you'd think -- especially from an outfit whose bread and butter is to 
provide online content.

But if that were the end of it, this wouldn't be worth mentioning. 
Here's the frosting on the cake:  I naturally brought this to the 
attention of alerts at emeraldinsight.com and here's the response I got back:

"We are aware of some technical problems on our new site. I would advise 
going to old.emeraldinsight.com and browsing for these articles on 
there. I have checked and this site is up to date."

"I apologise for any problems you have encountered and we hope to have 
them resolved asap."

While that's nice, you'd think they would have put some advisory on the 
pages themselves instead of leaving it up to some poor devil to use the 
system, not find it working properly, to report that and then to finally 
be told the material lay elsewhere.

Back in the good old days of the Soviet Union, the standard practice in 
the face of unexpected difficulties, set-backs and disasters was to keep 
a lid on them -- and if anyone found out, to assure people that 
everything was under control.  Whatever you think of that regime, this 
is certainly not a model for effective delivery of online services.

Far better to admit your screw-ups and make sure your users know about 
them every which way you can.  Web development after all is a constant 
school of humility -- you might as well embrace that fact if you want to 
  be successful in it.

LEO

-- -------------
Leo Robert Klein
www.leoklein.com