Entitlement Registry Project
‘Holdings’ traditionally related to individual subscriptions to journal titles acquired by a library. In the print world when a library cancelled a subscription, they would keep the print (their archive). In the electronic world, entitlement relates to the right of a library to retain access to previously subscribed journal titles that may be cancelled, but as we know in the e-world, life has become more complicated. In nowadays, the big deal proliferation has created two classes of access: subscribed and unsubscribed.
In the early days of the big deals, publishers were adamant that libraries were entitled to retain post-termination access to subscribed titles but not to those purchased via the big deal. This has changed and is changing: most of our NESLi2 publishers will give post-termination access to big deal titles covering the period that the library took the big deal (sometimes between 1996 and the present). It means that libraries will have different levels of entitlement across a publisher’s portfolio.
The Post-Cancellation Entitlement Registry would provide authoritative records of entitlement, which will be increasingly important which as a result of the economic situation, institutions cancel journal deals and when society titles (and their backfiles) move from one publisher to another.
An authoritative record of entitlement would have the benefit of:
- Saving libraries time and duplicated effort.
- Providing an authoritative record, to prove libraries entitlement to access archival runs of journals, whether that content is held on a publisher’s platform, or in preservation solution such as Portico.
- Providing the authoritative record, this is often required in a move from print plus electronic, to electronic only.
- Resource Management (ERM) systems, or into an UK Shared ERM.
- The development of the methodology for quality assurance and verification of entitlement records.
Post-Cancellation Entitlement Registry Scoping Project
In order to scope the work flows and the cost of establishing the Post-Cancellation Entitlement Registry, JISC Collections is undertaking a Post-Cancellation Entitlement Registry Scoping Project. Its aims are:
- To gather, normalize and verify the entitlement records of all UK higher education institutions to the titles in the NESLi2 deals with two sample publishers.
- To scope the cost and work flows for gathering, normalisation and verification of entitlement records of all UK higher education institutions across all of the NESLi2 publishers.
- To scope the cost and work flow for updating the entitlement records for all UK higher education institutions to all NESLi2 publishers on an annual basis.
In May 2012, the Post-Cancellation Entitlement Registry Scoping Study Final Report was published.
The project is closely aligned with a separate and parallel strand of activity led by EDINA.