I originally posted about how frustrating it is that our journal vendor (Swets) doesn't have a list of the customer numbers for electronic journals. Well I have an update from my reps.

I would like to say that it is a positive update, but it isn't.

Our sales rep. and our account manager contacted me regarding the issue. As I mentioned in my earlier blog our sales rep had told me that the Swets number was the customer number for journals. Well, he called me to let me know that he was actually wrong and that was not the case. He then directed my attention to their Internet Availability Report where the Pub Ref# is supposed to be the journal's customer number. He said that is the number that the journals provide Swets.

So of course I decided to check it out, because a list of the customer numbers would be great. I would never have to have piles of journal wrappers laying about my desk. I would just have a nice easy spreadsheet list that I could call up at my will.

I logged in as administrator for a couple of our journals and surprise, surprise, the numbers don't match for most of the journals. Even better, some journals don't even have numbers on the report, despite the fact that we have online access and I have the customer number in my personal list.

Our account manager called (and here is where it gets frustrating), she told me that those numbers (Pub Ref#) are the ones that the journal publishers provide. If they aren't correct then I can contact her and they can get the correct customer numbers by contacting the journal publisher.

If I want to use the Pub Ref# list to activate journal access, I really can't do that because some of the numbers are missing or incorrect. My account rep's answer to this was, "Well some of the numbers are correct." What good is that!?!?!?!? It is a total waste of time to try and use this list if you don't even know if the numbers you are dealing with are valid. The list is incorrect just enough to make it a completely useless document.

Unfortunately, my account rep just didn't quite understand my point. She just repeated that some of the numbers are correct and that I could contact her on the ones that aren't correct. Given this rather poor solution, I would rather collect journal wrappers and have my homemade customer number list. Swets' cure is worse than the illness.

So I am still back to my ultimate question. Why is it so hard to have a correct and complete list of journal customer numbers?! Why can't my journal vendor produce something like this? This is something that should be so simple and make so much sense. It is amazing that they can't even do this and their solution is for me to contact them with every incorrect freaking journal number. What a waste.