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Serials at the British Library

A presentation by

Peter RobinsonCustomer Services Liaison Team Manager

The British Library

Tel: 01937 546606peter.robinson@bl.uk

UKSG Serials Roadshow University College Dublin, 5 March 2009

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Today’s presentation

• An introduction to the British Library• Document Supply [Centre] • Sources of supply • How much we spend • Why we buy • What we buy …and what we don’t • Access to Document Supply services• Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC & Zetoc)• Copyright compliance• e, print and other resources• Questions.

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The National Library of the United Kingdom

One of the largest research libraries in the world

The national library of the United Kingdom

The world’s most diverse collection of research materials

250 years of material – covering all disciplines, languages, cultures and formats

WE ARE WE HOLD

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The National Library of the United Kingdom

Four sites:

- London St Pancras

- London Colindale

- Boston Spa, Yorkshire

- www.bl.uk

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The National Library of the United Kingdom

• The most comprehensive collection in the world

• Not the largest (only 150 million items!), but the most accessible library in the world

• A long and valued association with the UK Academic Community

• Essential services for business and industry

• Customers all over the world.

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Our purpose

• To collect and preserve the world’s intellectual output, irrespective of subject, language and format

• To make accessible the world’s scientific and cultural heritage

• To deliver information in a format to suit the user, whether at work, at school, at college or at home.

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Document Supply [Centre]

• Opened in 1961 to serve the research needs of the Nation

• Collection was built and is maintained for remote users

• Grew to be the hub of the Inter-Library Loan (ILL) system we have today

• Inevitable overlaps of coverage with the Reference Collection but we operate a common stock policy to minimise duplication

• Journals are print, electronic, sometimes both formats

• Supply is from any one of the three sites.

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Serials: sources of supply

• Subscription agents

• Direct purchase

• Donations

• Exchange agreements.

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Serials: how much we spend

• Total acquisitions budget for the British Library is c£14.8 million

• c£5.5 million is spent on serial subscriptions for document supply

• This reflects the greater demand for articles in serial publications compared to book loans.

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Serials: why we buy

• We have to! - Items required for document supply are purchased, not received automatically under the terms of the Legal Deposit Act (other Legal Deposit libraries are the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Library of Trinity College Dublin and the National Library of Wales)

• In advance of demand: - we scan information from various sources e.g. publisher catalogues, flyers, bibliographies etc. and subscribe to journals which are clearly within scope for purchase

• In response to demand: - we consider purchase when an item we do not hold is requested by a customer

• When a sample copy we have requested from the publisher - or an unsolicited item - meets our selection criteria.

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Serials: what we buy

‘Worthwhile’ i.e. scholarly or academic study level material on any subject

Serials / journals / periodicals / magazines

Reports – all kinds, including ‘alpha-numeric’

Annuals, Directories and Yearbooks

Newsletters and Newspapers

Monographs in series.

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Serials: what we don’t buy

Fiction, unless a critical edition with accompanying scholarly text or annotations

Very expensive items e.g. market research reports

Language may be a factor

Items that include updates or where the content is ephemeral e.g. computer software ‘version’ manuals, car maintenance manuals

Legislation in the form of case law

House and trade journals

Publications of local interest only

‘Special interest’, hobby or recreational items.

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Access to Document Supply services

• Standard document request, direct to BL Document Supply (email, via a telecoms link, via the web and interlibrary loan modules)

• British Library search and order services e.g. Zetoc, Inside, the British Library Integrated Catalogue, ARTWeb and British Library Direct

• Links from third parties with whom we have agreements.

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The Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC)

What is it?

• One of the treasures of the British Library!

• A database of over 20,000 journal titles (c13,000 science, technology and medicine; c7,000 arts, humanities, social sciences)

• Access to c23 million citations (including 4 million papers from conference proceedings)

• over 1 million citations added per year

• 8,000 added every day

• 72 hours between receipt of journal and citation added to database

• Can be licensed to third parties as raw data or … accessed via Inside, Zetoc and British Library Direct.

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The Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC) database

ETOC

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What is Zetoc?

The integrated current awareness and article ordering service for UKHE.

A partnership venture from The British Library, JISC and MIMAS

http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/

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Alerting service

Email alerts can be set up for:

• journal titles (table of contents)

• keyword in article title • author of article.

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Copyright – our remit

Our close liaison with the Copyright Licensing Agency and the world’s most respected

publishers is an assurance that our services arefully compliant with the latest legislation.

We have agreements with all the major publishers and many others.

We provide an electronic delivery service that satisfies the most stringent requirements

of the publishers.

Publishers know that by working with us they will receive payment of all the copyright fees

due to them.

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Secure Electronic Delivery (SED)

Since December 2003, there has been access to over 100 million items in the BL collection

• Photocopy machines replaced by over 100 high-speed digital scanners

• Virtually everything listed in BL catalogues can be scanned from the digital, print or microform originals

• The new secure format has the approval of all the major publishers

• Superb image definition using Relais® scanning technology

• Delivery options include - SED via Adobe DE® (notification is by email containing URL) - Ariel (email attachment) - Postal delivery with output from top-quality Xerox® printers from scanned originals.

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Library Privilege and Copyright

• During 2003, Copyright Fee Paid requests were piloted successfully with customers from the commercial sector

• Shortly afterwards, Library Privilege requests were accepted from UK higher and further education, government departments and the NHS

• Urgent requests (2hr or 24hr) must be Copyright Fee Paid.

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There’s more to life than e-journals!

Portals

e-journals and online databasesGoogle

VLEs and DLEsPublisher websites, e-books

Interlibrary loans

Local resources(other universities, museums, public

libraries etc)

Print collections

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The BL complements in-house resources

263,400 serial titlesincluding

33,000 journal subscriptions3,800 electronic journal subscriptions

221 cover-to-cover translated journal subscriptions.

Also…

5,115,000 reports

47 million patents from all over the world

3,211,000 books (annual intake 33,606)

433,800 conference proceedings (annual intake 14,000)

475,000 US doctoral theses

130,000 music scores

585,000 translations.

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British Library Document Supply

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Any questions?

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Serials at the British Library

A presentation by

Peter RobinsonCustomer Services Liaison Team Manager

The British Library

Tel: 01937 546606peter.robinson@bl.uk

UKSG Serials Roadshow University College Dublin, 5 March 2009