Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. While this notion
may conjure up sentiments expressly felt throughout the COVID-19
pandemic, it can also be applied to the rapid technological
developments of the past two decades. As library professionals, it
can be just as interesting to ruminate on what has changed with
the proliferation of electronic resources as it is to consider
what has not. While the specifics have varied – countless
collections have now been migrated to digital catalogues and
repositories and users now think nothing of accessing library
collections from anywhere in the world – issues around the Big
Deal, Open Access, interlibrary loan, website usability, and usage
statistics remain a fundamental part of library work today.
For that reason, Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries:
Issues and Solutions may be considered a foundational work
for medical librarians and technicians in understanding the
history of collections within and beyond their institutions. First
published in 2007, this book has subsequently been re-released on
two separate occasions with no changes to content. It was
re-released in 2012 in print and again in 2021 in an eBook format.
While the articles in this collection have not been updated in the
past fourteen years – certainly a significant period of time –
what is noteworthy is that many remain relevant. At the very
least, they help to paint a picture of the history of electronic
resource collection and management in the medical and health
sciences library profession. The first article in this book,
“Introduction”, was written by co-editors Elizabeth Connor and M.
Sandra Wood, and was published simultaneously in Volume 4, Number
1/2 of the Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical
Libraries which released its first issue in 2004. Connor
and Wood both also served as co-editors for the journal at the
time of publication and already had rich careers as widely
published medical librarians. In searching for a more recent
monograph, those interested in this topic might wish to read Health
Sciences Collection Management for the Twenty-First Century
edited by Susan K. Kendall which contains ten chapters written by
contributors across the United States [1]. Another collection of articles edited by M.
Sandra Wood, Health Sciences Librarianship, includes two sections
dedicated to collection services and user services respectively [2].
This book contains ten papers that explore the challenges and
opportunities of the ongoing digital transformation including case
studies of tools and services. These focus predominantly on
libraries in the United States, but also includes a case study
from Qatar and an article on the Virtual Health Library’s
provision of health information in Latin America and the
Caribbean. Each article is a succinct representation of a topic or
institutional experience and were evidently selected to represent
a variety of issues across the scholarly resource landscape at the
time.
The most compelling articles are those that discuss the Big Deal,
Open Access, and COUNTER journal usage statistics as these remain
pervasive themes for special and academic libraries. Kim and
Koehler’s “Moving the Big Deal” comments that this model became
fundamental for libraries embracing electronic content, but
discounted journal bundles came with another cost. Oftentimes,
libraries would find themselves paying for titles they did not
want and otherwise would not license, and more importantly,
library budgets could not always accommodate this standard. Even
in 2007, the discussion centres on consortial arrangements for
cost-sharing, university libraries opting out of the Big Deal, and
the priority of collections being made available electronically
wherever possible. While we might now wish to read about the
Transformative Agreement as a direct extension of Open Access or
about discipline-specific mobile apps for on-demand information,
we need only look to the many library blogs and journals (many of
which are Open Access) to review these current issues and trends.
As expected, there is content that is less relevant in 2022, but
the overall themes represented in this book continue to be
discussed albeit through a different lens. Articles such as
“Integrating E-Resources into an Online Catalog: The Hospital
Library Experience” is one example that shows its age with the
language used, but also represents a snapshot in time. In it, the
author describes the need to merge all electronic content into an
Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) using the vendor CyberTools so
that staff could access this from their desktop computers and
where “hyperlinks could be embedded…[to] allow users to link
directly to the source”[3].
Other articles such as one exploring the legal context of a
medical library’s resource offerings and another about
consolidating electronic journal access using the e-journal
management system TDNet can also be read for what they tell us
about a point in time. The language and the tools have changed,
but if we look at the table of contents for an e-resource
management journal today we will still see articles on shifting to
electronic access during the global pandemic, library website
design, and resource accessibility across developing countries.
The target audience for this compilation is librarians and library
technicians working in specialized medical libraries, but the
articles are approachable for a variety of specialities seeking
solutions to challenges of a similar nature. The writing of each
article is clear and concise and while there is terminology
specific to libraries, there is no extensive use of library
jargon.
As an early career librarian working in an academic health
sciences library, I was surprised by the relevance of what I
learned from this book on a subject that is continuously changing.
In reading “Scholarly E-Journal Pricing Models and Open Access
Publishing” I read about preprint servers like Arxiv (then
described as e-print) and the financial limitations of journal
packages in ways that I could easily identify them as being
written in the early 2000s. Yet, I could also clearly see the
connections with what I am learning in my own exploration of
collections and publishing. In this article, the authors discuss
the challenge faced by faculty in publishing in high impact
journals or paying to have their research made more widely
available. Today, subscription prices continue to rise while
Article Processing Charges (APC) remain a barrier for researchers
at institutions without the funds to support this model of Open
Access. Reading this book has also sparked my curiosity in our
users’ information seeking patterns and a desire to compile and
analyze COUNTER usage reports and ILS metrics for eBooks and
journals. The contents of at least a handful of articles struck me
as being very similar to the discussions we are having daily in
the pursuit of open scholarship and increased discoverability of
information resources.
I would recommend this book to a fellow early career librarian or
technician with an elementary understanding of e-resource
management in the health sciences, especially for those seeking
context for how their library came to operate as it currently
does. It may not be of relevance to those who have witnessed these
developments firsthand throughout their careers. Nevertheless, as
I have experienced, it may serve as a springboard for discussions
about the library’s role in enacting meaningful change: to
continue to seek solutions for reducing the financial burden of
authors and their institutions in providing access to electronic
materials and in tailoring our collections to the needs of our
users.
Conflict of Interest
Statement
No conflict of interest
to declare.
Angélique Roy MA, MI Health Sciences Librarian Queen’s University Kingston, ON, Canada Email:
angelique.roy@queensu.ca
References 1. Kendall SK. Health sciences collection
management for the twenty-first century. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman
& Littlefield; 2018. (Medical Library Association books). 2. Wood MS. Health sciences librarianship. Lanham:
Rowman & Littlefield; 2014. (Medical Library Association
books). 3. Samsundar DR, Integrating E-Resources into an
Online Catalog: The Hospital Library Experience. In: Connor E,
Wood MS, editors. Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries:
Issues and Solutions. London: Routledge; 2021 [cited 2022 Jan 20].
Available from:
https://www.routledge.com/Electronic-Resources-in-Medical-Libraries-Issues-and-Solutions/Connor/p/book/9780203051948
Roy