NRC-CISTI collect and connect strategy transition

Ottawa, ON, December 12, 2008 – The National Research Council Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) is implementing its collect and connect strategy. For journals, this strategy focuses on collecting electronic-only and connecting clients to publisher sites and other sources of content. This is part of the transition from print delivery to knowledge discovery of the electronic information that will be taking place over the next two years as we cancel print journal titles and clients move to new ways of accessing the content they need. As part of this transition, we will continue to deliver from our print collection and play an enabling role in helping clients access electronic content.

Reasons for making this change to an electronic-only collection are:

• Demand for NRC-CISTI's print collection is dropping because of wider access to the electronic version from publishers, repositories as well as from Open Access sources
• Users have shown a preference for immediate access to electronic content

Effective January 2009, print journal subscriptions have been cancelled for publishers Elsevier, Springer and Taylor & Francis. This represents about one third of the current journal titles we hold in the areas of science, technology and medicine. More print journal titles will be cancelled in the coming two years, until the transition from print to electronic is completed. However, going forward, we will continue to license the electronic versions of these titles. The NRC-CISTI collection policy is currently being revised to reflect this and will be available in spring 2009.

We understand that this will have an impact on what information you are able to obtain from NRC-CISTI and therefore we will play a facilitating role in providing options to connect you to the information you need. We will continue to provide the same level of access to our existing print collection, with no change to current ordering procedures. Moving ahead, articles from Elsevier, Springer and Taylor & Francis journals published after December 31, 2008, can be ordered using our Extended service.

Sincerely,

Pam Bjornson
Director General
NRC Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information
www.cisti-icist.nrc- cnrc.gc.ca