In a time of fiscal belt-tightening, the Grand Valley libraries have found a way to increase service to its users without increasing its costs. By cooperating with other Michigan libraries, Grand Valley has given its users access to 634 additional journals in the sciences starting in 2005. This was accomplished by participating with other libraries in two cooperative access plans.
The first plan, called the Michigan Academic Shared Access Plan, gives online access to 323 titles published by Wiley. This expands Grand Valleys coverage to include all University of Michigan and Michigan State subscriptions to Wiley journal titles as well as other Michigan libraries Wiley subscriptions. Access is 24 hours a day and available from anywhere with access to the Internet, for unlimited concurrent users. Full text access for back volumes starts with 1997 issues.
The second plan gives access to 445 titles published by Kluwer, recently acquired by Springer, and now called Springer-Link. Like the previous plan, access is 24 hours a day, available both on and off campus, with coverage back to 1997. All figures, tables, and high-resolution images produced in their print counterparts are available. Highly sophisticated text search and management is available. Online issues are available weeks before the printed counterpart. Users can create and reuse custom keyword and phrase searches. There is an alert function that allows users to sign up for a Table of Contents service.
A final initiative by the Grand Valley State University Libraries expands ScienceDirect Online access for its users starting in 2005. This platform provides the full text and illustrations of 180 Elsevier journals to which Grand Valley subscribes, from 2001 on. Science Direct Web Editions, which we formerly had, provided access only to the current 12 months of the issues to which we subscribed in print/paper. ScienceDirect also provides searching of citations to over 6.2 million additional STM articles. Again, access is 24/7 both on and off campus. Articles are available three weeks prior to the print journal release date. Users can personalize their accounts to have searches automatically run every day based on subjects of interest to them. They are automatically notified via e-mail of new articles in their field. In order for us to take advantage of this lower-cost electronic alternative, the library was obliged to cancel duplicate subscriptions to Elsevier journals in print and paper.
For more information, contact Bob Schoofs, Periodicals Librarian, at x12636.
