Librarians in the delivery of electronic journals: roles revisited

Reports results of a study to reappraise the role of librarians in the deli very to users of electronic periodicals, by examination of a specific elect ronic periodical service, SuperJournal, drawing on three different sources of evidence regarding librarians' roles: their perceived roles in the deliv ery of electronic periodicals, their actions in delivering SuperJournal and their behavioural characteristics when using SuperJournal. Focuses on four issues: the librarians' perception of their roles as deliverers of electro nic periodicals; consideration of whether their actions match their espouse d roles when faced with a specific electronic periodical; the rating of the ir use of SuperJournal in relation to their role as information deliverers; and whether their practised roles had any effect on end users. The empiric al evidence was collected during the course of the SuperJournal electronic periodical project and included: a log of site librarian activities related to SuperJournal; a transcription of librarian discussions during three wor kshops; an interview survey which was conducted with one librarian at each site; a 22- month SuperJournal usage log file; and a postal questionnaire s urvey conducted with all SuperJournal librarian users, to investigate their views about SuperJournal and their perceived roles in delivering electroni c periodicals; 68 librarians' usable responses to the survey were obtained (28% response rate). The librarians see the electronic periodical as a chal lenge to the library profession in a number of specified ways and, accordin gly, they espoused a set of roles which they thought would better define th eir position in the changing scholarly communication system.