• Several requests for online serials currently available through Fondren Library were made - please be aware that our online serials are listed both in Webcat and our online serials listing, the Ejournal Portal. The online serials listing has the added benefit of specifying dates of availability to Rice users (unlike print serials, you cannot determine available years from WebCat - the dates in the Webcat record simply indicate dates of publication ... not the same thing).

  Please contact your subject specialist if you'd like to make sure you are making the best use of the resources available to you.

• A number of responses said "just give us access to the Medical Center Library remotely" - this, unfortunately, is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

  Remote access to online content is controlled by the publisher licenses we must sign to obtain access. The publishers just do not care about the agreement between Rice and TMC - even if we 'joined' TMC (i.e. even gave up our separate Rice governance and become a branch of Texas or Baylor) we would still not get access without renegotiating individual licenses³ and giving over a boat load of money!

Immediate actions being taken (December 2006):

Fondren has initated orders for approximately 55 biomedicine journals (costing nearly $100,000 per year), slated to be available online to the Rice community in January 2007.

These titles are:
Anatomy & Embryology; Angiogenesis; Annals of Surgery; Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases; Applied Bionics & Biomechanics; Arteriosclerosis; Thrombosis and Vascular Biology; Artificial Organs; ASAIO Journal; Audiology and Neuro-Otology; Biomedical Engineering; Breast Cancer Research & Treatment; British Journal of Cancer; British Journal of Haematology; Cancer & Metastasis Reviews; Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy; Circulation; Circulation Research; Clinical & Experimental Medicine; Clinical Orthopaedics & Related Research; Connective Tissue Research; Critical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering; Critical Reviews in Therapeuic Drug Carrier Systems; European Journal of Neuroscience; European Journal of Oral Sciences; European Spine Journal; Growth Factors; Histochemistry & Cell Biology; JARO (Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology); Journal of Bioenergetics & Biomembrances; Journal of Biomaterials Science, Polymer Edition; Journal of Bone & Mineral Metabolism; Journal of Clinical Immunology; Journal of Clinical Oncology; Journal of Computational Neuroscience; Journal of Dental Research; Journal of Drug Targeting; Journal of Immunotherapy; Journal of Leukoctye Biology; Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons; Journal of the American Medical Association; Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy; Laryngoscope; Molecular Imaging; Nature Chemical Biology; Nature Methods;  NeuroReport; New England Journal of Medicine; Proceedings of the SPIE - Biomedical Optics & Medical Imaging Segment; Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology; Skin Research & Technology; Spine; Technology in Cancer Research & Treatment

Update (September 2007):

Fondren has allocated an additional $120,000 for additional biomedicine materials at the beginning of the July 07-June 08 budget year. Because publishers tend to time journal subscriptions on the calendar year, additional titles should become available in/after January 2008.

Additionally, an analysis of interlibrary loan data (yes, we do look at these for information about needs), indicates that we sent 75% fewer requests-to-borrow to the Texas Medical Center Library in Jan-Oct 2007 than in Jan-Oct 2006. Since the TMC library continues to be our first source for medical-related materials (i.e. we haven't started going elsewhere for copies), we believe our program is beginning to have some success.

³One example of license language that reflect the realities of this issue: "For an organization that has multiple locations in the same city that are administered independently, each location is considered to be a different site. No access from remote campuses or remote sites and no consortia or other forms of subscription sharing are allowed under this License."