Free Trials for Electronic Journals?

Recently a number of publishers of print journals have been offering free trail access to the electronic form of their publications. Last year, because of repeated difficulties with publisher free trails, the Library made the decision not to offer these to its users. The reasons?

• Usually these free trails are for a relatively short period of time. It is often the case that by the time we can widely publicize the availability of the electronic title, the trail is over. This does not allow users to adequately evaluate the electronic form of a journal even if they have great respect for its print counterpart.
• Since we dislike having to withdraw services, we are uncomfortable offering access when we know that we cannot afford to continue because of the publisher's pricing scheme. The Library prefers to offer stable and reliable access to its resources.

• Many times there are limits on the audience to whom these trials can be made available.
• Often the free trial publications involve substantial effort to establish and make them available to the public and additional effort to withdraw them.

The Library does recognize that in spite of these issues, free trial subscriptions offer benefits to faculty and students. We are reviewing our earlier decision and may begin to offer trail publications in a special section of our homepage. If you know of free trials to electronic journals that you would like to see, please email the information to KasalkoSallyG@exchange.uams.edu. If there are electronic journals, free or not, that you want the Library to consider for inclusion in its permanent collections, please email that information to MolesJeanAnn@exchange.uams.edu. The Library is making a concerted effort this year to greatly increase its offering of electronic information. We appreciate your interest and your requests.