Some respondents to our survey asked whether we could subscribe to e-book sources online, such as NetLibrary or Questia, or to additional e-journal sources like JSTOR. This question is really about what you might call the "business of libraries," the contractual agreements we maintain with various commercial vendors of information products & services.
It turns out that Questia will not sell subscriptions to libraries at all -- only to individual customers. And the problem with JSTOR, NetLibrary and similar vendors is that they will sell us only their entire resource package, of which only a small percentage is pertinent to religious studies, forcing us to pay a huge amount for material we can't use. These general services are very useful for a university that teaches in all subject areas, but for a specialized library like ours, they are not very suitable.
However, the "business" end of library management is always in motion, and we are monitoring this in hope that new appropriate and affordable options will become available.
Paula
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