Responses to the following posting:
From: John Barnett <JBarnett_at_utsa.edu>
>
>I am new to the serials game, and the deeper I get into the matter,
>the more questions I have (and, frankly, the more fun I have,too).
>Our library, an academic library serving a university of approximately
>18,000 students, has a number of subscriptions to digital journal
>collections (e.g., IEEE Xplore, JSTOR, Project Muse, Wiley
>InterScience, etc.). In addition, for some of the titles held, we
>receive print issues. For example, IEEE sends "free" print issues
>of their journals as part of our electronic subscription. In other
>cases, we have discontinued our print subscriptions, if our licensing
>agreements allow us to do so.
>
>In another related situation, we have serials for which we need to
>make retention decisions. In some cases, we will want to weed the
>print issue in favor of microfilm/fiche.
>
>In these circumstances, I would welcome hearing how other university
>libraries are dealing with their print issues. We do not have space
>in the stacks or in storage to keep all of our print issues, nor do
>we feel the need to, as we consider the electronic journal
>collections and microforms as "permanent" holdings--well, at least,
>as permanent as any library holdings, electronic or otherwise,
>can be.
>
>We have considered participating in the duplicates and exchanges
>union as a way to share the embarrassment of riches that we have.
>We have also considered selling off our print issues to Jaeger or
>USBE or other sources. However, does the cost and time it takes to
>send these issues on to their new home justify the benefits we may
>receive?
>
>I haven't found much to go on so far in Library Literature. If
>any of you have testimonials you'd like to make, I would welcome
>hearing from you.
>
>Thank you for your time and consideration.
>
>John
>
>John Barnett
>Collection Development, UTSA Library
==#1
From: Tom Izbicki <izbicki_at_jhu.edu>
Most of our older journals have gone to offsite shelving, & we are
considering sending the back files of any that we might cancel.
==#2
From: Denise Johnson <johnson_at_hilltop.bradley.edu>
We've handled many of the same issues you discuss in your msg., so I
thought I'd write. We have an FTE, by the way, of 6000.
Over the last 2-3 years, we've reviewed, in faculty meetings, our dead
runs of journals (e.g. journals which have either ceased publication or
which we have cancelled). For many of the titles examined, we decided to
withdraw the remaining volumes, sometimes after consultation with teaching
faculty in the relevant areas. Some of the criteria we used for keeping
dead runs: we kept long runs of titles with historical value if they were
indexed in sources such as Reader's Guide and International Periodicals
Index., we also kept titles of historical signifigance, even when we had
only short runs, if they reflected an important era of American History
from a unique viewpoint (e.g. I.F. Stone's Weekly), we kept titles which
had been subsumed by subsequent titles we now hold. That still left us
with thousands of bound volumes to dispose of. We did send lists to a
couple of OP Periodical vendors. We ended up netting about $3,000 from
the sale of the ones they wanted. A student worker was detailed to do the
packing, and the vendor had a relationship with a shipper who picked them
up, so the sale of our items was somewhat cost-effective. We also
offerred volumes to libraries in our area and in our catalog
consortium. We had no library takers.
We are currently considering dropping print and/or microfilm in favor of
electronic access to some titles. So far, we have dropped only
subscriptions to print indexes in favor of electronic products, but we
will probably be dropping some newspapers in microfilm in the near
future. We may also be weeding some long runs of current journal titles
in their retrospective volumes, due to access via JSTOR, etc. This last
is still under discussion.
I hope that helps. dj
==#3
From: "Linwood DeLong" <linwood.delong_at_uwinnipeg.ca>
We are dealing with these issues too. Our institution is smaller,
approx. 6,000 FTE. We are cancelling print subscriptions where we have
a "reliable" e-equivalent, such as Project Muse or JSTOR.&nbs p; We also
cancelled some of the print subscriptions for journals held by EbscoHost
and ProQuest, but I find that the agreements that publishers have with
these two aggregators are rather transitory: here today and gone tomorrow.
We may have to take the position that we will simply rely on
interlibrary loan for back issues before a certain date, in the event
that we find that our e-subscription has lapsed and that we no longer
have print. i .e. discard the print, because of space considerations,
and assume that in many disciplines, journal articles from the 1960s and
1970s are only infrequently requested. (I realize that a research library
could not take this position.)
We haven't worked out a dollar value per running foot of shelf space, to
work out the relative cost of keeping a print copy vs relying on
increased e-subscription costs. It's interesting to try to decide
whether it is cheaper to subscribe to JSTOR and discard print, or cheaper
just to keep the print.
We sometimes don't cancel print, if the print copy contains a lot of
important coloured ("colored" in the U.S. ?) illustrations, charts, art
reproductions, etc., because not everyone has access to printers that
can reproduce in colour.
I agree that this is a difficult issue with many ramifications.
Linwood DeLong
Collections Coordinator
University of Winnipeg Library
515 Portage Ave.
Winnipeg, MB
Canada R3B 2E9
==#4
From: Susan Smith <ssmith_at_westga.edu>
We have put our JSTOR bound vol. on BACKServ, an exchange listserv.
About half were taken by academic institutions. Some were requested by
backfile vendors or individuals. According to our state laws &
regulations, we are not allowed to give to sell to vendors or
individuals. I have one staff member who does all microforms, binding,
replacement issues, etc. She adds some to BACKServ each week and ships
them out as they are requested. We ask for reimbursement of shipping
charges. AT the end of a month we put the remainder in recycling. It
moves along pretty well.
Susan A. Smith
Head of Acquisitions
Ingram Library
State University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118
==& fyi, ja.
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Received on Tue Oct 09 2001 - 12:16:12 EDT