Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Site License Initiatives in the United Kingdom: The PSLI and NESLI Experience Borin, Jacqueline Information Technology and Libraries; Mar 2000; 19, 1; ProQuest pg. 42 L Site License Initiatives in the United Kingdom: The PSLI and NESLI Experience Jacqueline Borin This article examines the development of site licensing within the United Kingdom higher education community. In particular, it looks at haw the pressure to make better use of dwindling fiscal resources led ta the conclusion that information technology and its exploitation was necessary in order to create an effective library service. These conclusions, reached in the Follett Report of 1993, led to the establishment of a Pilot Site License Initiative and then a National Electronic Site License Initiative. The focus of this article is these initiatives and the issues they faced, which included off-site access, definition of a site and perhaps most importantly, the unbundling of print and electronic journals. Increased competition for institution funding around the world has result- ed in an erosion of library funding. In the United States state universities are receiving a decreasing portion of their funds from the state while pri- vate universities are forced to limit tuition increases due to outside mar- ket forces. In the United Kingdom the entitlement to free higher educa- tion is currently under attack and losing ground. Today's economic pressures are requiring individual libraries to make better use of their fiscal resources while the emphasis moves from being a repository for information to providing access to information. Jacqueline Sorin (jborin@csusm.edu) is Coordinator of Reference and Electronic Resources, Library and Information Services, California State University, San Marcos. As in the United States, the use of consortia for cost sharing in the United Kingdom is becoming imperative as producers produce more electronic materials and make them available in full-text formats. Consortia, while orig- inally formed to cooperate on interli- brary loans and union catalogs, have recently taken on a new role, driven by financial expediency, in negotiating electronic licenses for their members, and the percentage of vendor contracts with consortia are rising. Academic libraries cannot afford the prevalent pricing model that asks for the current print price plus an electronic surcharge plus projected inflation surcharges, therefore group purchasing power allows higher education institutions to leverage the money they have and to provide resources that would other- wise be unavailable. Advantages for the vendor include one negotiator and one technical person for the consortia as a whole. In addition, the use of con- sortia provide greater leverage in pushing for the need for stable archiv- ing and for retaining the principles of fair use within the electronic environ- ment as well as reminding publishers of the need for flexible and multiple economic models to deal with the diverse needs and funding structures of consortia. I During the spring of 1998, while visiting academic libraries in the United Kingdom, I looked at an exist- ing initiative within the UK higher education community-the Pilot Site License Initiative (PSLI), which had begun as a response to the Follett Report and to rising journal prices. At the time the three-year initiative was nearing its end and its successor, the National Electronic Site License Initiative (NESLI), was already the topic of much discussion. I History The concept of site licensing in the United Kingdom higher education 42 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES I MARCH 2000 community had already been estab- lished, since 1988, by the Combined Higher Education Software Team (CHEST), based at the University of Bath. CHEST has negotiated site licenses with software suppliers and some large database producers through two different methods. Either the supplier sells a national license to CHEST, which passes it on to the individual institution or CHEST sells licenses to the institu- tion on the suppliers behalf and pass- es the fees on to them (see figure 1). CHEST works closely with National Information Services and Systems (NISS). NISS provides a focal point for the UK education and research communities to access infor- mation resources. NISS's Web serv- ice, the NISS Information gateway, provides a host for CHEST informa- tion such as Ebsco Masterfile and OCLC NetFirst. Most CHEST agree- ments are institution-wide site licenses that allow for all noncom- mercial use of the product, normally for five years to allow for incorpora- tion into the curriculum. Once an institution signs up it is committed for the full term of the agreement. CHEST is not in the business of either evaluating products or differ- entiating among competing suppli- ers. Evaluations and purchase decisions are left up to the individual institutions.2 CHEST does set up and support e-mail discussion lists for each agree- ment so that users can discuss fea- tures and problems of the product among themselves. They also send out electronic news bulletins to pro- vide advance warning of forthcom- ing agreements and to assess level of interest in future agreements. CHEST operates in a similar manner to many library consortia in the United States. The major differences are that it sells to higher education institutions as a whole so the products they sell include not only databases but also for example, software programs. This is also beginning to change in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the United States. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education men- tions that institutions will not stop with library databases, "in the future we'll be negotiating site licenses for software and all sorts of things . . . not just databases."3 Although CHEST is substantial- ly self-funding it is strongly sup- ported (as is NISS) by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils of England (HEFCE). The majority of public funding for higher education fund- ing in the United Kingdom is fun- neled through the HEFCs (one each for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). One of the JISC committees, the Information Services Subcommittee (ISSC), which in 1997 became part of the Committee for Electronic Information (CEI) defined principles for the delivery of con- tent. 4 They were: • free at the point of use; • subscriptions not transaction based; • lowest common denominator; • universality; • commonality of interfaces and • mass instruction. I Follett Report In 1993 an investigation into how to deal with the pressures on library resources caused by the rapid expan- sion of student numbers and the worldwide explosion in academic knowledge and information was undertaken by the Joint Funding Council 's Libraries Review Group, chaired by Sir Brian Follett. This investigation resulted in the Follett Report. One of the key conclusions of the report was "The exploitation of IT is essential to create the effective Higher Education and Public Research Establishments Software, Data , Training Needs ! CHEST © CHEST (University of Bath) 1996 Figure 1. CHEST Diagram CHEST Deals , CHEST Offers Negotiations Software , Data, Training Materials t IT Product Suppliers library service of the future ." The review group recommended that as a starting point "a pilot initiative between a small number of institu- tions and a similar number of pub- lishing houses should be sponsored by the funding councils to demon- strate in practical terms how material can be handled and distributed elec- tronically." 5 As a consequence £15 million was allocated to an Electronic Libraries Program, managed by JISC on behalf of HEFCE. The Electronic Libraries Program was to "engage the higher education community in developing and shaping th e imple- mentation of the electronic library." 6 This project provided a body of elec- tronic resources and services for UK higher education and influenced a cultural shift towards the acceptance and use of electronic resources instead of more traditional informa- tion storage and access methods. PSLI In May 1995 a pilot site license initia- tive subsidized by the funding coun- cils was set up to : • Test if the site license concept could provide wider access to journals for those in the academ- ic community; • See if it would allow more flexi- bility in the use of scholarly material ; • Test the methods for dissemina- tion of scholarly material to the higher education sector in a vari- ety of formats ; • Test legal models for a national site license program; and • Explore the possibility for increased value for money from scholarly journals.7 Sixty-five publishers were invit- ed by HEFCE to participate for three years commencing January 1, 1996. HEFCE was also responsible through JISC for the funding of the elib pro- gram, but no formal links were estab- lished between the elib project and COMMUNICATIONS I BORIN 43 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the PSLI. 8 The final selection of four companies included Academic Press Ltd., Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Blackwell Science Ltd., and IOP Publishing Ltd. The publishers agreed to offer print journals to high- er education institutions for dis- counts of between 30 and 40 percent over the three year period as well as electronic access as available. Originally the electronic journals were supposed to be the subsidiary component of the agreement but by the end of the agreement they had become the major focus. The PSLI achieved almost 100 percent take up among the higher education institu- tions due to the anticipated savings through the program.9 HEFCE did not specify how the publishers were to deliver their con- tent. IOPP hosted the journals on their own server, for example, while Academic Press linked their IDEAL server to the Journals Online service at the University of Bath. One of the key provisions of the site license was the unlimited rights of authorized users to make photocopies (includ- ing their use within course packs) of the journals. Academic Press and IOPP provided full-text access to all their journals while Blackwell and Blackwell Science only allowed reading of full text where a print subscription existed. An integral part of the PSLI was that the funding from HEFCE to the higher education institutions was top sliced to sup- port the discounted price offered to the institutions. Several assessments of the initia- tive were made and a final evalua- tion of the pilot was concluded at the end of 1997. Initial surveys indicated subscription savings through the program (average annual savings were approximately £11,800 per annum) and the first report of the evaluation team showed a wide level of support for the project despite major problems with lack of commu- nication in a timely manner.10 The team recommended an extension of the PSLI to include more publishers and more emphasis on electronic delivery. One concern that was raised was ease of access, students had to know which system a journal they required was on. This was not easily discernible or user friendly. Evaluations by focus groups showed users wanted one single access point to all electronic journals.11 Also unre- solved was the need for one consis- tent interface to the electronic journals and a solution to the archiv- ing issue. At the end of the PSLI, HEFCE handed the next phase over to JISC. In the fall of 1997 JISC announced that a NESLI would be set up and a new steering group was established. NESLI was to be an electronic-only scheme and the invitation to tender went out at the end of 1997 with a decision to be made mid-1998. National Electronic Site License Initiative NESLI, a three-year JISC funded pro- gram, began on January 1, 1999 although the "official" launch was held at the British Library on June 15, 1999. It is an initiative to deliver a national electronic journal service to the United Kingdom higher education and research community (approxi- mately 180 institutions) and is a suc- cessor program to the Pilot Site License Initiative {PSLI). In May 1998 JISC appointed a consortium of Swets and Zeitlinger and Manchester Computing {University of Manchester) to act as a managing agent (Swets and Blackwell Ltd. announced in June 1999 their intention to combine Swets Subscription Service and Blackwell's Information Services, the two sub- scription agency services). The manag- ing agent represents the higher education institutions in negotiations with publishers, manages delivery of the electronic material through a single Web interface and oversees day-to-day operation of the program including the handling of subscriptions.12 44 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES I MARCH 2000 The managing agent also encour- ages the widespread acceptance by publishers of a standard model site license, one of the objectives of this being to reduce the number and diversity of site definitions used by publishers. Other important provi- sions of the model site license addressed the issues of walk-in use by clients and the need for publishers to provide access to material previ- ously subscribed to when a subscrip- tion is cancelled. The subscription model is currently the prevalent option although they are also work- ing towards a pay-per-view option.13 Priority has been given to pub- lishers who had been involved in the PSLI and to those publishers partici- pating in SwetsNet, the delivery mechanism for the NESLI. SwetsNet is an electronic journal aggregation service that offers access to and man- agement of Internet journals. Its search engine allows searching and browsing through titles from all pub- lishers with links to the full-text arti- cles. NESLI is not a mandatory initiative, the higher education insti- tutions can choose whether to partic- ipate in proposals and can pursue their own arrangements individually or through their own consortiums if they wish. While PSLI was basically a print- based initiative limited to a small number of publishers and funded via top slicing, NESLI is an electronic ini- tiative aimed at involving many more publishers. It is designed to be self-funding, although it did receive some start-up funding. Although it is an electronic initiative, proposals that include print will be considered, as it is still not easy to separate print and electronic materials.14 The initiative addresses the most effective use, access, and purchase of electronic journals in the academic library community. Its aims include: • access control-for on-site and remote users; • cost; Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. • definition of a site; • archiving; and • unbundling print from electronic. Access to SwetsNet, the delivery mechanism for journals included in NESLI, has now been supplemented by the option of Athens authentica- tion. Athens, an authentication sys- tem developed by NISS, provides individuals affiliated with higher education institutions a single user- name and password for all electronic services they have permission to access. Athens is linked to SwetsNet to ensure access for off-site, remote, and distance learners who do not have a fixed IP address. This supple- ments SwetsNet's IP address authen- tication, which does not allow for individual access to TOC and SDI alerting. A help desk is available for all NESLI users through the Univer- sity of Manchester. The definition of a site is being addressed by the NESLI model site license, which tries to standardize site definitions (including access from places that authorized users work or study, including homes and residence halls); interlibrary loan (supplying an authorized user of another library a single paper copy of an electronic original of a individ- ual document); walk-in-users; access to subscribed material in perpetuity (it provides for an archive to be made of the licensed material with access to the archive permissible after ter- mination of the license); and inclu- sion of material in course packs. JISC' s NESLI steering group ap- proved the model NESLI site license on May 11, 1999 for use by the NESLI managing agent.15 The managing agent asks pub- lishers to accept the model license with as few alterations as possible. During the term of the initiative the managing agent will be working on additional value added services. These include links from key index- ing and abstracting services, provi- sion of access via z39.50, linking from library OPACs, creation of catalog records and assessing a model for e- journal delivery via subject clusters. In particular, they have begun to look at the technical issues concerned with providing MARC records for all elec- tronic journals included in NESLI offers. Additionally they will be look- ing at solutions for longer term archiving of electronic journals to provide a comfort level for librarians purchasing electronic only copies.16 Two offers that have been made under the NESLI umbrella so far are Blackwell Sciences for 130 electronic journals and Johns Hopkins Uni- versity Press for 46 electronic titles. Most recently two additional ven- dors have been added to the list. Elsevier has made a proposal to deliver full text content via the pub- lishers ScienceDirect platform that includes the full text of more than 1,000 Elsevier science journals along with those of other publishers. A total of more than 3,800 journals would be included in the service.17 MCB University Press, an independ- ent niche publisher, is offering access to 114 full text journals and second- ary information in the area of man- agement through it's Emerald Intelligence + Fulltext service. Similarly, here in the United States, California State University (CSU) put out for competitive tender a contract for the building of a cus- tomized database of 1200+ electronic journals based on the print titles sub- scribed to by 15 or more of the 22 campuses-Journal Access Core Collection OACC). The journals will be made available via Pharos, a new Unified Information Access System for the CSU. Like Ohiolink, a consor- tium of 74 Ohio libraries, it will pro- vide a common interface to electronic journals for students and faculty and will facilitate the development of dis- tance learning programs.18 By unbundling the journals, libraries will no longer be required to pay for jour- nals they do not want or need leading to moderate price savings. Additional savings can be realized through the lowering of overhead costs achieved by system wide purchasing of core resources. Other issues being addressed within the JACC RFP included archiving and perpetual access to journal articles the universi- ty system has paid for, availability of e-journals in multiple formats, inter- library loan of electronic documents, currency of content and cost value at the journal-title level. 19 Currently 500 core journals are being provided under the JACC by Ebsco Inform- ation Services and the CSU plans on expanding those offerings. I Conclusion As we move into the next millennium library consortia will continue to work together with vendors to further cus- tomize journal offerings. However it is still far too early to say whether NESLI will be successful or whether it will succeed in getting the publishing industry to accept the model site license. If it is to work within the high- er education community, it will depend greatly on the flexibility and willingness of the publishers of schol- arly journals. It has made a start by developing a license that sets a wider definition of a site and that deals real- istically with the question of off-site access. By encouraging the unbundling of electronic and print subscriptions NESLI allows services to be tailored to specific needs of the information community, but it remains to be seen how many publish- ers are prepared to accept unbundled deals at this stage. Also as technology stabilizes and libraries acquire increas- ingly larger electronic collections, we will not be able to rely on license nego- tiations as the only way to influence pricing, access, and distribution. An additional problem that remains unaddressed by either PSLI or NESLI is the pressure on academics to pub- lish in traditional journals and the cor- COMMUNICATIONS I BORIN 45 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. responding rise in scholarly journal prices. NESLI neither encourages nor hinders changes in scholarly commu- nication and therefore the question of restructuring the scholarly communi- cation process remains.20 References and Notes 1. Barbara McFadden and Arnold Hirshon, "Hanging Together to Avoid Hanging Separately: Opportunities for Academic Libraries and Consortia," Information Technology and Libraries 17, no. 1 (March 1998): 36. See also International Coalition of Library Consortia, "Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Prac- tices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information," Information Technology and Libraries 17, no. 1 (March 1998): 45. 2. Martin S. White, "From PSLI to NESLI: Site Licensing for Electronic Journals," New Review of Academic Librarianship 3, (1997): 139-50. See also CHEST. CHEST: Software, Data, and Information for Education (1996). 3. Thomas J. DeLoughry, "Library Consortia Save Members Money on Electronic Materials," The Chronicle of Higher Education (Feb. 9, 1996): A21. 4. Information Services Subcom- mittee, "Principles for the Delivery of Content." Accessed Nov. 17, 1999, www.jisc.ac.uk/ pub97 /nl_97.html#issc. 5. Joint Funding Council's Libraries Review Group. The Follett Report. (Dec. 1993): Accessed Nov. 20, 1999, www.niss.ac. uk/ education/ hefc / follett/report/. 6. John Kirriemuir, "Background of the eLib programme." Accessed Nov. 21, 1999, www.ukoln.ac.uk/services.elib/ background/history.html. 7. PSLI Evaluation Team, "UK Pilot Site License Initiative: A Progress Report," Serials 10, no. 1 (1997): 17-20. 8. White, "From PSLI to NESLI," 149. 9. Tony Kidd, "Electronic Journals: Their Introduction and Exploitation in Academic Libraries in the UK," Serials Review 24, no. 1 (1998): 7-14. 10. Jill Taylor Roe, "United We Save, Divided We Spend: Current Purchasing Trends in Serials Acquisitions in the UK Academic Sector," Serials Review 24, no. 1 (1998): ~- 11. PSLI Evaluation Team, "UK Pilot Site License Initiative," 17-20. 12. Beverly Friedgood, "The UK National Site Licensing Initiative," Serials 11, no. 1 (1998): 37-39. 13. University of Manchester and Swets & Zeitlinger, NESLI: National Electronic Site License Initiative (1999). Accessed Nov. 21, 1999, www.nesli.ac.uk/. 14. NESLI Brochure, "Further Information for Librarians." Accessed Nov. 21, 1999, www.nesli.ac.uk/ nesli-librarians-leaflet.html. 15. A copy of the model site license is available on the NESLI Web site. Accessed Nov. 22, 1999, www.nesli.ac.uk/ Mode1License8.html. 16. Albert Prior, "NESLI Progress through Collaboration," Learned Publishing 12, no. 1 (1999). 17. Science Direct. Accessed Nov. 24, 1999, www.sciencedirect.com. 18. Declan Butler, "The Writing is on the Web for Science Journals in Print," Nature 397, Oan. 211998). 19. The Journal Access Core Collection Request for Proposal. Accessed Nov. 22, 1999, www.calstate.edu/tier3/ cs+p/rfp_ifb/980160/980160.pdf. 20. Frederick J. Friend, "UK Pilot Site License Initiative: Is it Guiding Libraries Away from Disaster on the Rocks of Price Rises?" Serials 9, no. 2 (1996): 129-33. A Low-Cost Library Database Solution Mark England, Lura Joseph, and Nern W. Schlecht Two locally created databases are made available to the world via the Web using an inexpensive but highly func- tional search engine created in-house. The technology consists of a microcom- puter running UNIX to serve relation- al databases. CGI forms created using the programming language Perl offer flexible interface designs for database users and database maintainers. Many libraries maintain indexes to local collections or resources and cre- ate databases or bibliographies con- 46 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES I MARCH 2000 cerning subjects of local or regional interest. These local resource indexes are of great value to researchers. The Web provides an inexpensive means for broadly disseminating these indexes. For example, Kilcullen has described a nonsearchable, Web- based newspaper index that uses Microsoft Access 97.1 Jacso has writ- ten about the use of Java applets to publish small directories and bibli- ographies.2 Sturr has discussed the use of WAIS software to provide searchable online indexes.3 Many of the Web-based local databases and search interfaces currently used by libraries may: • have problems with functionality; • lack provisions for efficient searching; • be based on unreliable software; • be based on software and hard- ware that is expensive to pur- chase or implement; • be difficult for patrons to use; and • be difficult for staff to maintain. After trying several alternatives, staff members at the North Dakota State University Libraries have implemented an inexpensive but highly functional and reliable solu- tion. We are now providing search- able indexes on the Web using a microcomputer running UNIX to serve relational databases. CGI forms created at the North Dakota State University Libraries using the pro- gramming language Perl offer flexi- ble interface designs for database users and database maintainers. This article describes how we have imple- Mark England (england@badlands. nodak.edu) is Assistant Director, Lura Joseph (ljoseph@badlands.nodak.edu) is Physical Sciences Librarian, and Nem W. Schlecht (schlecht@plains.nodak.edu) is a Systems Administrator at the North Dakota State University Libraries, Fargo, North Dakota.