We wanted to address an e-book access issue that is currently impacting the Library and provide some information about it.  If you have attempted to access an e-book through our catalog and then found you were unable to access it when you followed the link provided to JStor, you are not alone. The brief answer for this problem is that over the last year Falvey Memorial Library joined a program with The Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium (PALCI) where we and a number of other libraries in the consortia contributed a set amount of money and were given access to JStor’s entire e-book catalog.  If books in the catalog were accessed a certain number of times, this triggered an outright purchase of the electronic book in JStor.

While the program was running, anyone accessing the e-books wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between books that had triggered a purchase and those we were simply allowed access to. However, on June 30th we were notified that the program was “ending for the summer.”

Subject librarians know patrons need continued access over the summer and for faculty, this is one of the most vital times for them to conduct their own research. We have communicated these concerns to PALCI and have been told that the program will likely renew in the fall. We hope to convince them that allowing it to lapse during the summer is extremely undesirable.

In the meantime our tech team will be suppressing the records from our catalog, which means the books we do not currently have access to will not appear in a catalog search.  If you attempt to request one of these books through Interlibrary Loan or E-ZBorrow and receive an automated response indicating that the request cannot be placed because we have access, please contact your subject librarian and they will do the best they can to assist you.

Sarah Wingo is Humanities II team leader and the subject librarian for English literature and theatre. Email or phone 610-519-5183.

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