Full text availability on honni

In recent surveys carried out by the Medical & HSC Library some comments have been made about increasing full text availability of journals through honni.  The Library would like to take this opportunity to help you understand some of the issues relating to journal availability by responding to specific examples of the type of comments made.

• “Library should hold an online subscription to a greater number of clinical journals”

The Library is contracted by the DHSSPSNI to provide a range of services and resources and receives an annual budget to do so.  Unfortunately for several years the Library has not received an increase in its budget and in most years it has actually been reduced.  This has an impact on the available funds for journal subscriptions and as a result we have not been able to develop our full text collection.  The Library does listen to suggestions from HSC professionals and has developed a journal wish list.  It is hoped that when the funding situation improves we will be able to purchase new online subscriptions.

• “Current access not available”

A cost effective way of having access to a large number of journals is to purchase journal bundles or large collections of journals.  The advantage is that you gain access to a large number of journals that could not be afforded as individual subscriptions.  The disadvantage is that journals are from a wide range of publishers and in some cases the publisher will not allow access to the most recent issues of particular journals as they wish to protect their direct and more expensive subscriptions.  This is why you will find that some journals in the Ebsco and ProQuest collections have embargoes of 6 months or 1 year.

• “getting Athens will be good” or “in this internet age we should be able to access most articles via the web”

Many library users go directly to the publisher’s site, see an option for Athens log in and believe that an Athens username and password would allow access to these journals.  Athens is not a full text journal collection, nor does it allow access to all journals.  Athens is only a means of authenticating to journals for which the Library has paid a subscription.  (The Library uses a different method of authentication – Shibboleth).   In other words, an Athens log in will not enable access to all journals, neither does the fact that a journal appears on the internet mean that it is freely available.  The Library still needs to subscribe to each journal to enable access for its members.

• “HSC users would really need an extended choice of journals available online similar to what is available to QUB users”

The Medical & HSC Library’s electronic resources are separate from those held by Queen’s University although HSC users have access to the QUB print collections.  All publishers require separate subscriptions for each set of users which is why there is a difference in what is available.  Furthermore in all cases the cost of the subscriptions are significantly more for the HSC than for an academic subscription which is why you will find the University has some additional subscriptions to resources. There are cases, however, where the HSC has access to a journal not available to Queen’s staff and students.    Below are some examples as to how the costs for each compare.