The growth of electronic journals in libraries: Access and management issues and solutions

Libraries have greatly expanded their monetary and infrastructure investments in electronic journals. In addition, libraries have dramatically expanded their e-journal holdings through consortial agreements, publisher licenses, and aggregator subscriptions. User studies show a marked increase in the use of e-journals and a growing reliance on online journals for scholarship and instruction. The increased availability and usage of electronic journals has presented libraries with critical management, bibliographic control, and access problems. This paper explores e-resource management and bibliographic control mechanisms and access solutions, and examines the evolving relationship between e-resource management systems, the online catalog, local link resolvers, and full-text e-journal repositories. To address these interoperability issues, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library has developed several management and access tools. The Online Research Resources (ORR) combines a relational database, a searchable A-to-Z list, and elements of an electronic resources management system. The Journal and Article Locator (JAL) utilizes metasearch technologies over the ORR, the local OPAC, the local link resolver server, and the CrossRef metadata database to provide unified access to both electronic and print journal holdings and full-text articles.