Contenu du sommaire : Abonnements numériques : nouvelle donne, nouvelles problématiques

The relevance of the library as a resource has been based traditionally on the comprehensiveness of their periodicals collections and the added value provided by a professional level of content indexing. Special as well as other libraries today face two major different but linked phenomena. On the one hand, electronic support and remote access have become the norm, while on the other hand publishers and their products have gone global. This has led to major changes: priority of access over collections preservation, emergence of new players, uncertainty about economic models. In this particularly shifting context, libraries have to change their activities and their place in organizations, without abandoning end-user services.

Virtualization has upset fundamental notions of library acquisition, collections building and preservation, while attributing increased importance to technological and legal issues. Today, major publishing houses dominate the subscriptions market, costs are sky-rocketing and contracts are the rule – while long-term access to information is no longer assured. This dossier provides professionals with guidance and a framework for reflection.

Centralization of actors and access, influence of aggregators, technological “middlemen” replacing traditional mediators: these factors draw attention to the instability of the electronic marketplace. The e-library is also sculpted by the Internet economy and limited by the users themselves who prefer to navigate freely among available resources. G. Chartron analyzes the features of this complex and unfinished landscape.Four articles complete this first section: “French news media: complementarity of paper and electronic”, “Science, technology, medicine: is there a future for these packages?”, “Legal publications: 30 years of change”, “Wolters Kluwer: from publishing to new technologies”, and a first-hand report on the CAIRN Portal: “The role of E-publishing is not to replace but to relay, complement and enrich paper publishing”.

What are the different stages of a library's acquisition program? How can we satisfy end-users while respecting budgetary restraints? R. Bloch describes her approach, from identifying end-user needs to placing orders. Three additional contributions conclude this section: an article on the market players: “In the Periodical Jungle”, a presentation of five subscription agencies, and a first-hand report on how “grouping purchases made it possible to reduce administrative costs and open a multiprofessional discussion”.

Knowing how to listen and staying open to dialogue and pedagogy, being able to negotiate, knowlegdeable of contents along with budgetary, legal and technical secrets... The authors review the skills (as yet not fully explored in basic librarian training programs) you need to deploy when making an electronic purchase. Two first-hand reports conclude this section: “An advanced transition from paper to electronic, while managing the constraints of both media”, and “The Couperin Negotiator, an experienced librarian who can implement multiple other skills”.

Abundant, volatile, contingent – the Web sometimes provides a false sense of visibility for researchers. Use of the Web forces information professionals to come to terms with the issue of long-term access and even the very concept of collections building. Because libraries now face competition from the commercial sector with regard to information preservation, F. Cavalier reflects here on the missions and place of large institutional libraries. This last section concludes with several articles: “The professional approach that journalists take is what gives value to a publication or its website”. “Open access: opening up to publishers?” and “Centralization in the professional information sector.