Cultural Heritage

As a member of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) I’ve received print copies of its journal Update for many years. Originally monthly and more recently with ten issues a year, from January 2008 selected articles were available in a digital version. Now I learn that from 2010 six editions a year will be in printed in hard-copy and six in digital format.

What difference will it make to me? The digital issues have new features (a choice of three reading views, a slideshow of the magazine, increased coverage through web links to additional content, and access to the magazine 24/7 anywhere in the world), members can access the archive of previous digital issues and further developments, including embedded audio and video content, are being researched. While that all sounds great (and I know that print publishing and mailing out is expensive) I then realised that there are some downsides too.

The journal is a member benefit, so access to Update Digital (and its archive) is restricted to CILIP members. Now I have access to the Internet at work and at home; other members may have neither. Further, I regularly lend my copies to a non-librarian colleague to read – and I can’t do the same for him with Update Digital issues. And if I have an article published in Update, I can’t simply link to it from my own publications web page.

So is it wrong to keep professional journals behind bars? When CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group (CIG) decided to move ‘Catalogue and Index’ from a print journal to an e-journal we also struggled with this issue, with some people arguing strongly for totally free access. In the end we came to a pragmatic compromise. It’s a benefit for CIG members, so we have members only access via the CILIP web site. But this only applies to the issues of the current year; the archive of digital issues from previous years is totally free for anyone to view and we also have plans to digitise the back run. Another downside of restricted access also means that we can’t have articles linked elsewhere or let authors link from their own web pages until the following year. And for those people without Internet access? We sent out a print letter to our members before the move to digital asking anyone who still needed a print copy to contact us – only a handful of people requested this, so currently these are printed off and sent out. Institutional subscribers get a PDF file and permission to print a hard copy for their members. Our solution is not perfect and we are keeping it under review, but for the moment it works.