Emerald in partnership down under!

Citation

(2002), "Emerald in partnership down under!", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 30 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2002.12230bab.005

Emerald in partnership down under!

Emerald in partnership down under!

Keywords: Australia, Databases, Universities

Emerald (formerly MCB University Press) is delighted to announce a multi-year electronic licensing agreement with the Australian Consortium CAUL (Council of Australian University Librarians). This licensing agreement will allow all participating member libraries electronic access to up to 12 years of information held within 138 journals published by Emerald.

Carol Robertson, Consortia Manager for the Australasia region, remarked that negotiations had taken place with the CAUL members over the past six months and a win-win agreement had been achieved. "We recognise the issues facing our library customers in this region and we have done our level best to provide the CAUL members with quality information at an affordable cost. By entering into this agreement, the participants have secured lower costs for their database collections for up to five years, plus heavily discounted options on additional print subscriptions. It has been a pleasure to work with the members and with Diane Costello, the CAUL Executive Officer, and I look forward to a long working relationship."

CAUL was formally set up in 1975 and since that date has strived to put into place a strategic plan that emphasises collaborative activities, contributing to the achievement of key objectives including:

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  Information resources. Maximising access to information resources and services required for the advancement of teaching, learning and research in Australian universities.

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  Scholarly communication. Transformation of the current system of scholarly communication.

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  Best practice. The pursuit of world class performance within Australian university libraries through application of the principles of continuous improvement, quality and business excellence.

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  Advocacy, marketing, communication. Identify and exploit all opportunities for CAUL to promote and raise awareness of the role of university libraries in improving the quality of higher education, research and the national information infrastructure.

Through CEIRC, CAUL's Electronic Information Resources Committee, CAUL facilitates co-operative purchasing on behalf of its members, as well as external participants from academic and government research organisations in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

On the successful signing of the agreement, Diane Costello said: "Emerald has worked very hard over the last few years to make its products attractive and affordable to an increasingly stressed higher education sector. Its early transition to an electronic environment, and its willingness to move quickly to electronic-only subscriptions has been a major factor in the level of uptake of this agreement with 29 of the 46 universities in Australia and New Zealand. Members have appreciated the company's responsiveness to achieving a licence compatible with the needs of the academic community in Australasia".

Bill Russell, Director, Emerald, added: "the signing of this license gives me particular pleasure as it is our first consortium agreement with our customers in Australia and New Zealand. The number of institutions with access to the Emerald Fulltext database has more than tripled world-wide over the last 20 months, and we are delighted that we now have the opportunity to open up access further to students, faculty members and librarians within CAUL. Our business is dedicated to increasing usage, and we will generate over 7 million article downloads in 2001. We look forward to CAUL members driving up these industry leading usage levels even higher, and to breaking the 10 million article download mark in 2002!"

Source: CAUL press release