IReL

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IReL

• John FitzGerald, UCC

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Content of my Presentation

• IReL in a nutshell
• Consortial purchasing by Irish libraries
• Birth of IReL
• IReL now and in the future
• Implications

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Origins
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(No Transcript)
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Title

• IReL..
• ..is the Irish Research e-Library
  (Consortium)

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IReL in a Nutshell

• A consortial purchasing scheme
• Seven universities
• Access to scientific material
• Supported by SFI and HEA
• Supplementary funding
• 3,000 e-titles
• Centrally negotiated
• Centrally administered
• Likely to expand

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Consortial Purchasing by Libraries
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Why not consortial purchasing?
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Consortial Purchasing by Libraries

• CHEST
• JISC
• JSTOR
• Irish University periodicals contract
• Web of Science..LION..Science Direct..Patrologia
  Latina..ECCO..
• IReL

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Consortial Purchasing by IReL Libraries

• Value for money
• Subscription price inflation
• International exemplars (FINeLIB, Canada, JISC)
• Technological progress
• Emerging role of scientific research
• User demand and
• User pressure on university/research funding
  agencies

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Birth of IReL

• May 2004
• Science Foundation Ireland and Higher Education
  Authority decisions
• 20M over 5 years
• Universities, initially
• Phase I live by December 2004
• At least 2,500 titles

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Birth of IReL

• Publisher package model
• CHIU Librarians Group overseeing
• Negotiating agent Content Complete Ltd.
• IRIS Ltd. as the managing agent
• Supplementary funding model means work!
• IReL Model Licence
• 2-3 year licences

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Whats Available Now?

• ACM PortalThe ACM DL (Association for Computing
  Machinery Digital Library) is a vast collection
  of citations and full text from ACM journal and
  newsletter articles and conference proceedings.
  Click here to view full list of titles.
• American Chemical Society Publications ACS
  Package The ACS was founded in 1876 and is the
  world's largest scientific society. Full text to
  over 30 peer reviewed ACS titles. Click here to
  view full list of titles. 
• Annual ReviewsAnnual Reviews offer
  comprehensive, timely collections of critical
  reviews written by leading scientists. Annual
  Reviews volumes are published each year for 30
  focused disciplines within the Biomedical,
  Physical, and Social Sciences. Full text. 
• Blackwell Synergy STM CollectionFull text to
  Blackwell's Science, Technology and Medicine
  Journals. Includes Economics.
• Emerald Fulltext42,000 searchable articles from
  over 100 Emerald journals. Subjects covered
  include Management, HRM, Marketing,
  Librarianship, Mechanical engineering, Electronic
  and Electrical Engineering, Food Science.Online
  archive back to 1989. Click here to view full
  list of titles.
• IEEE/IEE Electronic Library (IEL)The IEEE/IEE
  Electronic Library (IEL) provides access to
  almost a third of the world's current electrical
  engineering and computer science literature,
  featuring high-quality content from the Institute
  of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
  and the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
• Institute of Physics (IoP) Publishing Full text
  access to all of the IOP's journals, from 1994.
• Kluwer Journals OnlineAccess to a vast and
  expanding set of full text journals from Kluwer,
  in most disciplines.
• Nature Portal to full text of Nature magazine
  along with 17 other Nature titles. Click here to
  view full list of titles.
• Science Direct Full text of over 1500 journals
  published by Elsevier Science in all disciplines,
  now includes Academic Press and Harcourt Health
  Sciences titles.
• Science OnlinePortal to Science Magazine full
  text and other services such as Science Now,
  daily news service and Science Careers.
• Scientific AmericanFull text of every issue from
  1993 to present.
• SpringerLink Full text to over 500 journals from
  Springer-Verlag in the Sciences, Technology and
  Medicine
• Web of Knowledge The Web of Knowledge is a
  portal to the citation database Web of Science,
  which contains Arts and Humanities Citation
  Index, Science Citation Index, and Social
  Sciences Citation Index. WOK also includes 1.
  Essential Science Indicators, an analytical tool,
  giving essential science performance statistics,
  2. Journal Citation Reports journal performance
  metrics, including Impact Factor and 3. ISI
  Proceedings.
• Wiley Interscience 
• Wiley Interscience provides full text online
  access to over 540 journals from John Wiley
  Sons. Click here to view full list of titles.

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Whats Available Now?

• Access by university community via university
  library web-sites
• Mediated by the relevant subject specialist
  librarians
• Also 100 directly available single titles
  selected by the research community

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Whats to Come?

• More titles, including
• Biomed Central
• CAB Direct
• Crossfire Beilstein
• Cell Press
• Embase
• Emerald
• Biosis Previews
• Ovid Biomedical
• OUP
• RSC
• SciFinder Scholar
• Taylor Francis
• Wiley

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Whats to Come?

• CHIU E-Resources Steering Group
• Monitoring
• Service evaluation
• Increase in usage
• Greater demand for information fluency
• More undergraduate research
• More funding.??

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The Future

• Humanities Social Sciences proposal
• Fully HEA-funded
• Balanced funding for e-journals
• 5M recurrent, 5M one off
• Live by end of 2005?
• Benefits teaching and learning, as well as
  research

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IReL the ve Implications

• Powerful resource for research, teaching,
  learning
• Attract high-flyers
• Promotes local academic and national
  socio-economic objectives
• Establishes top-slicing model
• Hugely popular
• affirms role of the library and restores our
  image
• Reduces physical processing

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IReL the not so ve Implications

• Relies on external funding
• Ties up local funds
• Poor meta-searchability
• Obscures the role of the library
• Ignores print and service needs
• What happens after 2008/9?
• Reinforces the commercial publishing model..

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Hey, I thought you librarians were promoting open
access publishing??!