Responses to the following posting:
From: Kenneth Murr <krmrr_at_CLEMSON.EDU>
>
>In August, I had a request from our Resource Sharing staff to help with a
>citation to CATALYST TODAY. The citation referred to an article starting
>on page 415 of vol 28, n. 4. Since we subscribe to ScienceDirect, they
>had tried to get the article from there but the online version only went up
>to page 389. I verified the article using Web of Science and a kind
>reference librarian from VA Tech went to the shelf and verified that the
>article really did exist in print while I waited on the telephone.
>
>We reported the error to Science Direct and received, at least to me, very
>disturbing news: "As of today we have under 2% of our
>journal content missing. " My first thought was "Oh my, .02% would be bad,
>this is terrible." Some of my colleagues here at Clemson were unconcerned
>and assured me that it was not that bad. After all, we have had missing
>issues, torn out pages, etc. before. I responded that yes, but we had
>procedures to deal with such things. Our acquisitions system automatically
>notifies us if issues are late, we order individual issues, interlibrary
>loan missing pages, etc. What do we do if the publisher has errors? How
>can I know as I look at the online journal which stops at page 389 that
>there are really 6 more articles unlisted. My friends re-assured me that
>Elsevier would correct the errors just as they said they would in their
>response to us. Well, it's been a month and with no change. During this
>time, patrons have reported other missing articles and even missing issues.
>
>This has forced me to reconsider my support for "going all
>electronic". Our Libraries' goal is to go as completely electronic as
>possible and I had supported that very strongly.
>
>Have any of you, noticed problems with electronic sources?
>
>Thanks
>
>Kenneth R. Murr
>Clemson University Libraries
>Clemson, SC 29634
==#1
From: clenox <clenox_at_jcu.edu>
My view is that the publishers need to have and follow procedures for fixing
the errors, just as libraries always followed procedures to replace missing
articles, etc. It is a nuisance for them, but with our increasing dependence
in electronic sources, they need to follow through. I'd say we all need to
continue to inform them and insist on the importance.
Cindy Lenox
John Carroll University
==#2
From: "Linwood DeLong" <linwood.delong_at_uwinnipeg.ca>
Yes, we have had several. I remember an instance in which a journal
article had been scanned in with a totally incorrect title, because the
background for part of the title was green, and the scanner didn't
read the title. Yesterday I was working with a student who was using
an e-version of a journal article in which all of the footnotes had
been stripped off. The footnote numbers were in the text, but they
didn't lead to anything. Whole articles, especially book reviews, are
suppressed in some cases, if the aggregator is not given permission by
the journal publisher to include them. I remember phoning a company
and discovering that they had had difficulty s canning a particular
issue, and that this issue wouldn't be up for a while.
I have no idea how these things can be systematically checked, but the
library community has to be vigilant, because there are all too many
people who, with a sweep of the hand, state that "it's all there on
the Internet".
Linwood DeLong
University of Winnipeg Library
Linwood DeLong
Collections Coordinator
University of Winnipeg Library
515 Portage Ave.
Winnipeg, MB
Canada R3B 2E9
Received on Tue Oct 09 2001 - 12:21:47 EDT