budgets or unpredictable “one time money.” Will eBooks replace or just supplement andenhance collections? Will patrons have more of an impact on purchase decisions ? Willselections be over broad subject disciplines or subject specific? What are the training needsand what will be the role of the librarian in the learning curve the patron enters? Are we allrunning harder each year and still waiting for the legendary “high” that comes to those in therace with experience and preparation? Or do we feel a sense of exhilaration that we are nowentering a new era with selection and purchasing of eBooks in the offering? Is the nextgeneration library here? This meeting filled the role of an ALCTS discussion group admi-rably well and left attendees more educated and enthusiastic about the promise of theelectronic book and its place in our future collections.

Dorothy K. MarcinkoAuburn University Library

Auburn University, AL 36849, USAE-mail address: marcidk@mail.auburn.edu (D.K. Marcinko).

Electronic scholarly publishing: opportunities for collaboration among librarians,publishers, and scholars

Mary Summerfield (Online Books Project, Columbia University Libraries), KristineBrancolini substituting for Julianne Bobay (Information Science Library, Indiana Universityat Bloomington) and Mary M. Case (ARL) discussed the current state of electronic scholarlypublishing. Summerfield discussed the history of the Online Books Project and ColumbiaInternational Affairs Online (CIAO). She first discussed how the Online Books Projectconducted an environmental analysis of users. They used focus groups, interviews andsurveys. Reports of the key findings of the group are available at,www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/digital/texts/about.html.. This project will last until 1999.

CIAO began in September 1997. Its primary focus is gray literature and conferenceproceedings. The team surveyed the subscribers about the strengths and weaknesses of thesite. The strengths are the availability and access to the documents but the weaknesses arethe slowness of the computer, downtime and reading online is uncomfortable. The users areseeking the usability of a print book. They want narrow lines, white space, scrolling downand the ability to extract and annotate to a print file. Since the inception of CIAO, thelibrarians have found that the CIAO database has eased problems with reserve shelf spaceand that demand for ILL has dropped. The study covered the librarian’s concerns aboutoffering online databases. Some concerns are that students will seek only what is online,though it may not be the best resource. Online cannot replace the printed book. Otherconcerns are who will decide who will provide what online. Who will refresh and preservethese online products? The authors are concerned with the question of whether anyone wouldpurchase the print version of their book if it is also online. The publishers want control of thebook for sales and profitability. Summerfield concluded that online compliments the print.

Brancolini read Bobay’s report. She discussed the results of Indiana University study ofPEAK (Pricing Electronic Access to Knowledge),http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/peak.. PEAK is pricing model designed by the University of Michigan and Elsevier to testdifferent pricing approaches for online products. This experiment provided 1,200 full-text

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journals from Elsevier to the participants. Its hypothesis asks whether prevailing pricingmodels make sense in today’s environment. Twelve institutions participated in a test of threepricing models. The first is a traditional subscription price; the second is based on the costper article at $7.00; and the third is based on the cost per search $4.50, but once the librarypurchases that article, they owned it. The University of Michigan offered all three options butIndiana University decided to use the third option. The library purchased 3,000 tokens at$4.50 each for seven campuses. Many interesting factors became known during the study.Publicity and forecasting use are important factors that were not considered at the beginningof the study but played an important part in its outcome. Brancolini stated that the library didnot publicize the product, and most of the users learned of it by word of mouth. Once theylinked the PEAK site on the library’s web page, they observed that the usage went up. Thelibrary staff did not purchase enough tokens to complete the year. The results are not yetavailable for all twelve participating libraries.

Case spoke on the ARL SPARC initiative. The purpose of SPARC is to present thescholarly community a cost-effective place to publish. The SPARC model is developing anonline product to permit scholars’ online accessibility to new journals. This model willprovide a new publishing arena for scholarly, refereed journals. Universities’ tenure com-mittees are beginning to recognize the electronic article. Case discussed the trends inscholarly publishing. Trends are developing in the use of e-mail, live interactions (meetingson the Internet), and the desire for a cyber community of scholars. Often the technology hasnot kept up with the desires of users. Case spoke of the physic community and the AHAGutenberg Project. These scholarly sites are offering prizes to young scholars for electronicpublications. Case concluded that eventually the technology will create an electronic bookand time will solve the intellectual property issues, and that life will get more complicated.

Lia S. HemphillNova Southeastern University,

3301 College Avenue,Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33314, USA

E-mail address: lia@nsu.nova.edu (L.S. Hemphil).

Charge it! Going plastic in acquisitions

This outstanding program was sponsored by the ALCTS Acquisitions Section’s Organi-zation and Management Committee and chaired by M. Dina Giambi (Assistant Director ofTechnical Services, University of Delaware). Members of the panel included: Cynthia Hill(Manager, SunLibrary/SunMicrosystems), Donald B. Satisky (Vice President of Sales andCustomer Services, Blackwell Book and Information Services), Karl D. Hassler (AssociateDirector of Network and System Services, University of Delaware) and Josephine B.Williamson (Head of Acquisitions, University of Delaware). In most cases, the panelistsreferred to the credit card as either a purchase card or a procurement card.

Hill described the benefits of implementing the American Express purchase card programat her corporate library. It has reduced purchase order processing, lowered the number ofcheck requests, reduced the supplier file, and improved vendor relations. American Express

305Conference Reports / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 24 (2000) 267–350