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Librarians in the delivery of electronic journals

roles revisited

Department of Information Science, Loughborough University, c.mcknight{at}lboro.ac.uk

Liangzhi Yu

Department of Human Sciences, Loughborough University

Susan Harker

Department of Human Sciences at Loughborough University

Kathy Phillips

HUSAT Research Institute at Loughborough University

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.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Vol. 32, No. 3, 117-134 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/096100060003200303


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