[KS] full-text services

[Walraven, B.C.A.]

It may be worth for AKSE to try once again, but remember that in the first instance the attempt failed because the provider was not interested, for whatever reasons. So it was a business problem rather than about cost or legal aspects. 

I am out of it now, but I also think the cost might be prohibitive for AKSE. The first thing to be done also should be to find out how many European scholars have no access to these services. I have the impression (but it is no more than an impression) that there are not as many as Frank thinks.

Boudewijn Walraven

-----Original Message-----
From: Koreanstudies [mailto:koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws] On Behalf Of Frank Hoffmann
Sent: donderdag 20 juni 2013 18:14
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Subject: Re: [KS] full-text services

The comments by Dennis are to the point!
I just checked three of the services I had mentioned before … and the published contract conditions are in every case very similar:

See the example for JSTOR, which offers full-text access to over 1,700 academic journals 15,000 books, and also other primary sources.
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

Q U O T E :
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6.2  Access to the Platform shall be controlled by JSTOR through the use of IP addresses, Shibboleth, and/or, at JSTOR's sole discretion, passwords or other methods. Institutional Licensees shall be responsible for issuing and terminating passwords within its control, verifying the status of Authorized Users, providing lists of valid passwords or sets of IP addresses to JSTOR if applicable, and updating such lists on a regular basis.
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This is pretty simple: JSTOR (or ProQuest, or others) will ask a subscribed institution for a set of IPs that they (the subscriber
institution) use to access JSTOR's bibliographic DB servers; these IPs are then white-listed. The software that JSTOR or others provide, or any access module for such other such scripts (or simply the API commands), would then in addition communicate an institutional username and password … so the bibliography server controls access by institutional username, password, and IP (and/or by access key, which would be more secure). And the institution, say AKSE, would then control the access to its server (which runs this connection software--and that 'server' could be a simple hosting account at a dedicated IP) via username/password login control. As Dennis just mentioned, access for the "end user" would then be channelled using a VPN connection. That is the usual setup in such cases.

To summarize, how I see it--the issues are not a technical or logistical ones whatsoever but this is just about cost and legal
aspects: (a) there is no technical problem implementing this; implementation is simple and costs are minimal (hosting account with a dedicated IP instead of a shared one, so we talk about a dollar a month), (b) someone would need to control access, regulate who has access and who not, (c) cost for subscriptions would be the main issue, therefore my suggestion to (d) inquire about a bundled set-up, to create some sort of AKSE (or other "international Korea researchers" 
etc.) "sub-account" at an institution that would be willing to work this out with AKSE (or another group). Those would then mostly be legal issues to be looked into, not so much technical ones. Let's not forget that there are also a lot of wonderful Korean full-text DBs that are secured as if they would contain the state's Silla crowns …. access only via 주민등록번호. I cannot speak for others, but I at least would be most delighted if such Korean research DBs would be wider open for international researchers and interested hoppy scholars: therefore my suggestion to check out if a Korean institution would be willing to cooperate on such a project. 
 
Best,
Frank


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Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws