DUBLIN, Ohio, June 10, 1997--Blackwell Ltd., which includes B.H. Blackwell Ltd. and Readmore Inc., has signed a cooperative agreement with OCLC to offer subscriptions to electronic journals available via the OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online service, which OCLC expects to launch this month.
"We foresee subscription agents playing a vital role in the licensing and management of electronic journals, just as they have in traditional print journals," said John Barnes, director, Electronic Publishing, OCLC. "Blackwell's and Readmore are two well-respected companies, and we are pleased to be working with them to assure a smooth transition to electronic journals for the library community."
Under the agreement, a library will be able to subscribe through Blackwell's to a journal, or group of journals, available via Electronic Collections Online, just as it would a print journal. Blackwell's will then relay account information to OCLC, and OCLC will provide the library with access to the journal via Electronic Collections Online. Through a single Web interface, the library will have access to full text from the journals it subscribes to, as well as citations from all journals available through the service.
The cooperation of OCLC and Blackwell's will provide libraries with centralized purchasing for electronic journal subscriptions and integrated purchasing procedures and collection management for electronic and paper journals. Other benefits include access through a service that maintains the best qualities of print journals--archives, browsing capability, high-quality page representation, cover-to-cover content and locally defined collections--in an electronic form with powerful searching capabilities and access to hundreds of titles.
OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online is designed to accommodate access and storage of thousands of titles and provide libraries with a cost-effective solution for accessing, storing and managing electronic journals. The service includes print-quality article representation, archiving, complete and timely coverage of journal content, usage statistics, technology migration, and technical and product support. The Web interface supports cross-journal searching and extensive browsing.
In future releases, OCLC plans to fully integrate Electronic Collections Online with the OCLC FirstSearch service and its pilot projects in electronic archiving.
Blackwell Limited, the third agent to agree to offer subscriptions to Electronic Collections Online, has been supplying periodicals to libraries since 1919 and is now among the largest subscription agents in the world. With a database covering over half a million subscriptions and 35,000 publishers worldwide, Blackwell's handles orders for every type of journal and series for every kind of library. Blackwell's is located in Oxford, United Kingdom, and has offices in New York, New Jersey, Portland, Sydney and Singapore.
OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit membership computer library service and research organization whose computer network and services link more than 24,000 libraries in 63 countries and territories [www.oclc.org].
