Librarians in the delivery of electronic journals

Abstract

Reports results of a study to reappraise the role of librarians in the delivery to users of electronic periodicals, by examination of a specific electronic periodical service, SuperJournal, drawing on three different sources of evidence regarding librarians’ roles: their perceived roles in the delivery of electronic periodicals, their actions in delivering SuperJournal and their behavioural characteristics when using SuperJournal. Focuses on four issues: the librarians’ perception of their roles as deliverers of electronic periodicals; consideration of whether their actions match their espoused roles when faced with a specific electronic periodical; the rating of their use of SuperJournal in relation to their role as information deliverers; and whether their practised roles had any effect on end users. The empirical evidence was collected during the course of the SuperJournal electronic periodical project and included: a log of site librarian activities related to SuperJournal; a transcription of librarian discussions during three workshops; an interview survey which was conducted with one librarian at each site; a 22-month SuperJournal usage log file; and a postal questionnaire survey conducted with all SuperJournal librarian users, to investigate their views about SuperJournal and their perceived roles in delivering electronic periodicals; 68 librarians’ usable responses to the survey were obtained (28% response rate). The librarians see the electronic periodical as a challenge to the library profession in a number of specified ways and, accordingly, they espoused a set of roles which they thought would better define their position in the changing scholarly communication system.