EBSCO Publishes an Open Letter to the Library Community re: Exclusivity of Titles
It's really not a big surprise to report that EBSCO has now just published and sent ResourceShelf its open letter to the library community about the database exclusivity issues that has received an expanding amount of attention during the past couple of weeks. First, at ALA Midwinter and second, last week when Gale Cengage published an open letter to the library community. ProQuest also shared a few comments.
Today's open letter from EBSCO is signed by Sam Brooks, Senior Vice President.
EBSCO supports libraries in many ways and will continue to do so. This includes programs to raise awareness of the value and importance of libraries on a national and local level. One of the ways we support libraries is by ensuring that our customers do not lose access to the most important titles in databases – whether academic journals or general magazines. It is with great effort and expense that such stability is offered and most of our customers appreciate this and recognize that we do everything possible to keep pricing affordable.
EBSCO has many agreements with many publishers, and is very open about the fact that our databases include dramatically more unique content than other aggregators. We think publishers choose to work with EBSCO because we listen to their concerns and attempt to find solutions that work for the publisher and for libraries. Publishers appreciate that we respect the value of their content and do not sublicense their content to free websites that compete with libraries and each publisher’s core business.
[Snip]
While Gale is correct that ongoing full text for Forbes will be available via some EBSCOhost full-text databases and not Gale’s; their depiction of the way this happened is not accurate. In fact, Forbes told us that they received multiple bids from library market aggregators and simply decided to go with EBSCO.
Again, that is just a small portion of the letter. You can read the full text here. (PDF)
We also received a copy of a "Clarification of Titles" lists that was requested by The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC).
Here are titles which have been noted last week on blogs and lists as being subject to some form of EBSCO exclusivity based on recent agreements with publishers. Can you please confirm that as far as you know ALL of the following general magazines have the following in common:
1) They have active (a.k.a., ongoing) full text in at least one EBSCOhost full-text database.
2) They either do not currently have active full text in Gale or ProQuest OR they will soon not have active full text in Gale or ProQuest. In other words, neither Gale or ProQuest have active full text for any of these titles and if either of them does now, they soon won’t.
Brooks says the list is not complete but it is accurate. Finally, a few follow-up questions from the ICOLC are responded to including one asking if any of the titles on the list are new to EBSCO. Brooks says the only new title is Sunset.
Brooks responds by saying, "No. In fact, we weren’t the first and we see them being signed all the time by other vendors, with little or no media coverage. ProQuest has some exclusive licenses that pre-date anything we have ever done (e.g., The Wall Street Journal) and has a large number of other newspaper exclusives too."
He goes on to give several examples (with links) to resources from ProQuest, Newsbank, and Gale.
Well, that was EBSCO's return shot. We have a feeling that this back and forth (aka game of tennis) is just beginning. Actually, it's becoming more of a game of hardball than anything else.
The FreePint Family is a family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success.
'FreePint... provides most of my professional development because it won't come through work and [other resources] just don't cut it.'
FUMSI Forum: Do you have a research question? Post it to the FUMSI Forum, where professionals share Q&A and useful tips on how to Find, Use, Manage and Share Information. It's free.
FreePint Shop:
VIP LiveWire:
