NESLI: an agent for change or changing the agent?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470010325664 |
| Published date | 01 April 2000 |
| Pages | 121-126 |
| Date | 01 April 2000 |
| Author | Paul Harwood |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
NESLI: an agent for
change or changing the
agent?
Paul Harwood
Introduction
The National Electronic Site Licence
Initiative (NESLI) is part of the Joint
Information Systems Committee's (JISC,
http://www.jisc.ac.uk) Distributed National
Electronic Resource (DNER, http://
www.jisc.ac.uk/pub/#dner) ± an attempt to
provide a managed and structured framework
of trusted and validated electronic
information sources, in different disciplines
and subjects, for the UK higher education
(HE) community.
The initiative was planned as a replacement
for the previous three-year Pilot Site Licence
Initiative (PSLI) at a time when major changes
affecting the acquisition and dissemination of
academic and researc h literature (both
electronic and print) were under way.
Although PSLI had begun as a government-
funded effort to reduce the cost of printed
journals, an important byproduct of its
success was greater awareness and use of the
electronic versions of the journals included in
the initiative.
In addition, print journal purchasing by
consortia tendering had become the prevalent
purchasing model ± replacing the direct
relationship between subscription agents and
university libraries in many cases.
Added to this, a few m ajor publishers,
having invested very heavily in new e-journal
delivery solutions, were actively approaching
both their library and their end-user customers
directly in order to find out firsthand about the
market's perception of their newly developed
electronic products and services.
Another significant development was that
CHEST (the Combined Higher Education
Software Team), having successfully obtained
attractive deals for software and secondary
databases for UK HE institutions (HEIs) over
a number of years was now looking into
negotiating with full-text primary publishers.
Given all the developments listed above,
and the fact that a range of new intermediaries
and aggregators were offering electronic
journal services, the role of the subscription
agent was becoming less clear and obvious
The origins of NESLI
The Pilot Site Licence Initiative was an
initiative of the Higher Education Funding
Councils (HEFCE, http://www.hefce.ac.uk),
The author
Paul Harwood is based at Swets Subscription Service
and is the NESLI Managing Agent.
Keywords
Electronic publishing, Licensing, Agents, Subscriptions,
United Kingdom
Abstract
The UK higher education community's National Electronic
Site Licence Initiative (NESLI) is an attempt to encourage
the widespread usage of electronic journals as
replacements for print. Although this is to a large extent
about reducing the financial barriers to the take-up of
electronic journals, another firm aim is to further integrate
provision of electronic journals with the full range of
electronic services offered to the academic community.
This paper examines the origins of the initiative, the
Managing Agent's functions, and the results of the
initiative so far. It goes on to consider the viability of the
NESLI model and possible future roles for subscription
agents in the electronic world.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
Features
121
The Electronic Library
Volume 18 .Number 2 .2000 .pp. 121±126
#MCB University Press .ISSN 0264-0473
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