More on BMJ

Well, things are looking up a bit. BMJ have now contacted me and will be coming back with a price for the three month period to the end of this financial year and for London access from April 2005. The price should be with me by the end of this week. Which gives me precisely three weeks to sort something out for continuation of service in January - my last working day is Friday 17th December. Needless to say I made BMJ know that their lack of contact and response to my increasingly vocal emails over the past months was pretty poor.

BMJ - what is going on??

As most of you know, electronic BMJ is effectively free. We've had it included in our general subscription of BMJ journals (a collection of around 25+ journals published by BMJ) although we don't actually "pay" for it. From January 1st, the electronic BMJ will be charged for. At present, we are not precisely sure how much it will cost to provide across London and I'm not getting any response back from BMJ- which is a little frustrating....

We were hoping that a joint deal with Higher Education and the National Core Content would happen to enable continued access to BMJ - and at no extra cost to London - but that seems to have been disbanded due to cost.

As far as I know - from 1st January until 31st March we still should have access to BMJ through our present BMJ Journals subscription - although we may well have to pay something for this access come the new financial year. We have pricing for the BMJ collection but that doesn't include BMJ itself and I have been trying to get someone to commit to a price but am not having much success at present.

We are getting several enquiries into eKAT on what is going on with BMJ, so I thought I would let you know of the current state of play.

Friday afternoon

Apologies for any curt replies to emails or telephone calls this afternoon as I will be sorting out the non-nhsnet / don't know where I work people to send to lucky Athens administrators. If I were still sharing an office with Barbara, I would be contributing heavily to the swear box. No wonder Mel looks drained after sorting this lot out! Ho hum! Will compensate by putting the headphones on and listening to Uriah Heep. Found it cheap - honest.

Second non-work related blog...

Went to see Bill Bailey at the Apollo in Shaftesbury Avenue with my daughter last night. We were waiting for a 14 bus right opposite. The non appearance of said bus, the biting cold forced us across the road to purchase tickets for the gig. Em, my daughter, has been down from St Andrews Uni this week (reading week... are these students ever working???) and had already been to see him on Monday night but she was up for a second showing.

Was excellent. Very quick on the improvisation and an accomplished musician. If he releases the Hokey Cokey in the style of Kraftwerk before Christmas, it will Christmas No.1.....
Think he finishes on 4th December so get in quick for a good laugh

Blogging Block

Had a conversation with Jane Williamson (NCL) yesterday who has taken the plunge with organizing a blog for LKDN (she is present chair).

After spending time last Friday setting the blog up and emailing all those who can access it - the Trust IT department came up with a policy that was instigated first thing Monday morning - not allowing access to blogs!!!

Well, at least she can read it anywhere else - other than work of course..

123doc

email from Stefan Darke for those still having trouble getting in...


To log in correctly please follow the below steps.
1. Log in to your Athens account.
2. Click on to the 123Doc resource.
3. Click on to login on the left side menu on 123Doc's webpage.
4. Click on Athens login.
5. Please fill in the box with your email and address. If you already have
a 123Doc account it will ask you for your username and password, which you
will enter (123Doc username & password not Athens). The majority of users
will not have had a previous account so will have to supply your email and
address. Once this is done you will only have to do this once.
6. Click on Go Study then Online E-courses to gain access to our material.

eKAT review

We've been so involved with the eKAT review over the past few days, I haven't really had time to think about practical stuff.

EBSCO - I went to talk to EBSCO direct last week, plus I've got a meeting with Richard Osborn, Louise and Isabel to check over licensing and access on the 4th October.

UCL and Middlesex Uni still have issues over assigning local material to the new nhs prefix, which relates to EBSCO and this looks like it will take some time and discussion to sort out. It is also clear that there is no protocol for adding of local resources to London's nhs prefix (or any other region). There are trusts that have local resources not thinking they can add the resources to Athens and there are others who have added stuff, but not thought of adding to the new prefix. Something for discussion on the 8th October.

Non-nhsnet machine self-registration and people who don't know where they work (apparently quite a few which is worrying) notifications to eKAT via Athens are being worked through. This week this hit 60 plus and these all need confirmation from Athens administrators. The process is working OK, but we are getting problems with Athens admin people not being able to easily confirm the people are legit. This is a process we need to look at.

123doc is another story which I haven't really had time to devote to...