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Cliff May 12th, 2008

Last Friday, hours after I posted my review of Elsevier’s user services, I got a call while I was at Lowe’s picking up some mulch.  A coworker had received a call on the Ref. Desk from an Elsevier person looking for me.  She passed me his number and I called him back.   Apparently someone at Elsevier keeps an eye on the blogosphere.

Now I do have to say that both times that I spoke to someone at Elsevier I had very pleasent customer service experiences (and anyone who knows me, knows how I rave if I get a good customer service experience).  The folks that I talked to were prompt, polite, and were as helpful as they could manage (which wasn’t much, due to the agreement between the publisher and the vendor).  I am pleased with their customer service, it’s just that my users can’t easily use the product that they are paying for.  Which is bad.

Here’s my take on things.  We pay over $600 for an institutional subscription to AJOG, which includes print and online access for that title.  Somewhere between the publisher and Elseveier, someone made a decision that this title should be available by username & password only, and not by IP range.  Which means that my library’s users have to jump through several more hoops (some of them aflame, it seems) just to get online access to a journal that they are paying for.  This is bad.

Here are my options:

• I can rant about this (done!), and maybe Elsevier would even bend the rules just for my institution (because I’m a loud mouth).  Those are high hopes in the contract-driven, litigious e-resource world we live in.  But that wouldn’t change things for other institutions who have the same type of subscription, and whose users have to jump through the same stupid hoops just to get access.
• I can ask Elsevier to work closely with the publisher, libraries, and Elsevier’s customers (library users, not librarians!) to figure out the easiest way for users to get access to online content (done!).
• I can spend anywhere from minutes to hours trying to create a work-around that would give my users the username and password.  Hopefully before they get to the login screen.  If they notice it.  If they write it down.  If they don’t think they they have to pay for the article.  If they don’t get so frustrated that they give up and move on.  Maybe they’ll need help?  Too bad, no way to put that in there… (not done, yet).

Needless to say, I think that all vendors should take a close look at how their users get access to the resources that they are paying for.  Is it easy?  Is it quick?  Is it clear?  Does it take twelve steps just to get to the full-text?  Look I’m not asking for a price cut, I just want my users to get what they’re paying for.

Please.  Think of the users.

• User-Centric Service , reviews