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 Universities and higher colleges of education are changing their traditional libraries to digital ones ... 
This is done with varying speed, depth, and breadth. IIN provides a model though which libraries can build their digital library. At the same time, IIN offers some of the highest ranked resources as contents for digital library. |
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 Through its partner publishers, IIN offers a large number of databases, electronic journals ...
| , full text full image databases, electronic books, electronic references, and portal services. Furthermore, IIN offers state of the art library management system. |
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 key element in the formation of a digital library is its journals subscription. Universities in the region are one by one moving their holdings from print-based to electronic-based ...
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What this means is that in the past 7-8 years universities have been asking print journal agents to supply them with the print titles and any free electronic (and at times paid electronic) access which might be possible. This is what we call a print-based subscription. This is changing rapidly. Still many universities wish to maintain their print journals, but at the same they are moving their subscription to electronic-based.
There are a number of key advantages to an electronic-based subscription which is making it the preferred choice for almost all libraries:
• Universities can still receive their print journals, but in many cases, at discounted rates
• Electronic-based subscription can be cheaper than a print-based one. As access to electronic titles is weeks before the print journal gets shipped, universities can use the standard shipping services of publishers and avoid extra handling and shipping costs. • Libraries can gradually phase out their print titles and hence make a great deal of saving • Libraries will have perpetual access rights to their electronic subscriptions • Electronic-based subscription is generally accompanied with many years of back files • Libraries may opt to receive access to the full collection of publishers, hence making a very large volume of journals available to their users • Consortium based pricing is now available either for closed consortiums or through Open Consortiums such as the Gulf and MENA Open Consortium • Plus all advantages of an electronic library
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 There are many advantages in moving towards electronic libraries, while traditional libraries are still the most common ones. In what follows, we simply list the benefits of using electronic libraries ...
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Contents
• Volume of Data: Your library receives many more journals and their back files
• Shelf Space: This is no longer an issue • Speed of access: It is pretty fast • Precision of Access: Search to find what you really need • Up to date: See the latest information without shipping delays • Pre-print access: See approved articles while they are in press and waiting to be published • Links: Seamlessly travel from one publisher to another through references in articles • Research History: Use the links to go back in articles and find out the history of a research
Current Awareness
• Alerts: Users receive automatic alert emails when their favorite journal/article is available
• Holding: Make your users aware of your holding and increase their incentives to use various resources, while avoiding unnecessary external document ordering.
User Community
• Campus-wide Access: With IP-based authentication all PCs in the campus are in effect gates to your digital library
• Location Independence: In the office, in your classroom, traveling abroad? Location is not important any more in most cases. With roaming access, you can define username and password for remote access. • Multi Platform (OPAC, URL, Home Page, A&I Databases): Access your electronic journals through various products. • No time constraint: No closing time. • Wider User Community: Desktop and simple access, motivates a much larger user community • Communicate with authors. With a click of the mouse, communicate with authors of your favorite articles • Concurrent and unlimited number of users: There is no limit
Librarians, Acquisition Management
• Perpetual access rights: Your library has perpetual access to the contents of the year that you paid for.
• Usage Statistics: Frequent statistics enable you to develop your collections • No missing issue • No gap
• Cost: All in all you are not really paying more, if you consider various costs involved in maintaining your print journals. However, you are getting many times more contents and even much more usage.
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 IIN and most of its partner publishers have decided to take an alternative approach to the formation of a consortium in the Gulf and MENA region ...
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As a result, our partner publishers are offering exceptional prices for their full (or sometimes partial) collections of electronic journals and their back files.
The main features of the consortium are as follows:
• Consortium pricing mainly affects costs of full collections of publishers
• Libraries must maintain their spend level with our. You may decide to maintain your subscription in print format or switch them to electronic format. In the latter case, you can still decide to receive print copies as well.
• Your Library will pay a small extra fee to receive access to not only its subscribed titles, but also the complete collection of a publisher with its back files
• The objective is to enable universities and other institutions to have access to a large collection of electronic journals and their back files in order to rebuild
their library. Usage statistics and reader feedbacks will help universities to expand their subscription by switching to electronic access, while they can still maintain a level of print subscription.
• The extra fee for a complete collection has the following features:o While it reflects size of the collection, it is a small fraction of the real value of the collection. o It is determined with this assumption that no institute will use all titles. Therefore, for example, publishers are fully aware of the fact that an engineering-oriented institute might not require journals in medicine and life sciences, or other fields.o They are generally (but not always) tiered to reflect various user community sizes.
In general, our partner publishers form between 30 to 40 percent of holdings of a typical library. However, this is usually costing 70 to 80 percent of the library budget. Therefore, by using the Open Consortium initiative, libraries can multiply their titles from our partner publishers a few times (usually between 10 to 25) and receive access to long years of back files (between 5 to 150), while their cost may not increase much. |
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