Scholarly Electronic Journal Access in Academic Libraries: Issues for Future Development

Introduction As academia progresses towards the 21st century, increases in student numbers, distance learning, changes in copyright licensing and lack of funding means that academic institutions have to look more closely at the use of electronic resources in order to meet these challenges. The “wired campus” and “virtual university” mean more users looking for electronic resources and increased pressure on libraries to provide these services. The development of electronic journals in the early 1990s and the onset of electronic publishing appeared to be a solution to the problem. Journals could be stored electronically thereby saving space, the risk of lose, theft or damage is lessened and costs where significantly reduced. Electronic journals have become an increasingly important part of academic library collections, however they have not proved to be the panacea the profession hoped for. Electronic journal useage has created a new set of issues such as archiving, copyright, cataloguing, site licensing, remote access, hardware requirements and journal design. There are many stakeholders involved in the selection of electronic journals within academic libraries from librarians, to users and publishers. This paper attempts to raise awareness of some of the issues which will have to be considered if scholarly electronic journal publishing is to develop over the next decade. The content and ideas presented in the paper are derived from research undertaken in the area for a student Masters dissertation.