[Eril-l] large ebook packages, quality and librarian control/customization

[Melissa Belvadi]

Hi, all.
Our library subscribes to both the Proquest and EBSCO large academic ebook
subscription packages.
Our librarians (all 6 of us!) have just had a discussion about quality,
curation, and control of the content of those packages, and we all would
like to hear from the rest of you.
We are concerned about the inclusion of poorer quality publishers, like
Nova Science, and more generally the lack of transparency by the vendors
about their criteria for inclusion - are they just driven by sheer size and
will include anything to get their title counts up for marketing, or are
there selection/exclusion criteria that would align with mainstream
academic librarian criteria of quality?
That last is obviously a question to be put to the vendors themselves.

What I'm asking you all is whether this is something you and your
colleagues are concerned about, or whether your internal consensus is that
the deals are good enough that you don't feel the need to look much "under
the hood" beyond the basic usage data statistics themselves?

Or do you actually do any kind of quality analysis of your own of these
packages, and if so, can you share with me your findings and conclusions?

Relatedly, if you load the MARC records for these packages in your
catalogs, do you ever make a point of excluding/suppressing the records for
any particular publishers or any other criteria?

Further relatedly, if the vendors made it possible for your institution to
customize the subscription package to explicitly exclude certain
publishers, would you do it?

Further relatedly, and in the context of these packages, to what extent do
you and your colleagues consider that sheer usage is itself a sufficient
measure of value (in terms of your choosing to renew the subscriptions) or
whether you do, or wish you could do, any other kind of analysis?

I would very much appreciate whatever thoughts and practices you have to
share on these topics!

Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca 902-566-0581
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