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Penrose Library has not, in recent memory, undertaken a comprehensive serials and database review project. Over the last ten years, we have added several interdisciplinary programs, committed to new forms of information access and retrieval and are experiencing the effects of the scholarly communication crisis. During those years, journal costs rose at rates approaching those of health care. For example, in 2008, journal prices for academic libraries increased at an estimated 10.1%, and the average price was $524 per subscription.1 What effect has this had on our ability to provide access to the materials you need?
Looking back just 6 years, in 2002/03, the Library spent:
By 2007/08, those percentages had shifted to:
Comparing 2007/08 to 2002/03, we actually spent $94,500 LESS on books and videos compared to our spending in 2002/03; during the same time, our spending for subscriptions increased by 49%. Whitman’s expenditures reflect broad trends noted in a recent study done by the Association of Research Libraries.2 These trends do not, we believe, serve the library’s goal of maintaining a balanced and rich collection.
Because so much of our budget is committed to subscriptions, we are struggling to support new curricular areas, purchase some of the amazing resources that have appeared in the past several years and serve the research needs of the academic program. During the past several years, we have added new areas of study and these require sufficient resources. As we consider all our needs and the way we build the collection in general, it is time that we review journal and database subscriptions to see if these are the titles that are the most important for our current work.
Our goals are twofold: pedagogical and financial. Pedagogically, we want to insure that our substantial journal expenditures are used to purchase the titles that best support our current academic mission and that we have increased flexibility to consider new journals and electronic resources.
Financially, the Library staff have achieved substantial savings over the last few years by negotiating better contracts through the Orbis Cascade Alliance, moving selected titles to “e-only,” and purchasing selected journal “bundles” that resulted in significant savings AND greater access. Even while reducing expenditures, we’ve actually added access to over 1000 peer-reviewed journals.
At this time, we are ready for departments and programs to begin their review of all journals, continuations and database subscriptions (except for journals that are bundled in a package that we know we cannot cancel). The subscriptions we are able to review total approximately $550,000 and we hope to reduce this by a minimum of $55,000, or at least 10 %. The process we follow will be sensitive to special circumstances that affect the needs of individual faculty, departments and programs.
The faculty review will consist of two parts:
The Library will review the titles in light of the information that has come from the faculty and make final cancellation decisions in consultation with the Faculty Library Advisory Committee. The Library will consider issues such as equity, usage, cost, alternative means of accessing titles and new options for archiving and delivering content in addition to feedback from the faculty. At the conclusion of its review, the Library will distribute the list of cancellations and format changes to the faculty. As is always the case, if there are any questions about the decisions the Library has taken, they can be discussed with the Faculty Library Advisory Committee or the Provost/Dean of Faculty.
The complete steps of the review are outlined below:
| Late January/early February 2009 | Meetings with Division and Departmental Chairs |
| Late January/early February 2009 | Departments and programs receive lists of serials in their field and are asked to provide quartile rankings of titles. |
| March 31, 2009 | Departmental and program lists are due to the Library |
| May 7, 2009 | A compiled list of proposed cancellations and format changes will be posted on the Library's Journal Review web site. Faculty and students will be encouraged to submit comments. |
| June 1, 2009 | All comments are due. The Librarians and the Faculty Library Advisory Committee will begin a final review, and post a revised list of cancellations and format changes. |
| June 15, 2009 | Cancellations are initiated. |
In addition to providing appropriate funding for monographs, this review should also increase our flexibility to consider a few important new journal subscriptions and electronic resources. As we move through this review process, please feel free, at any point, to send your ideas for new journal titles to Roger Stelk, Head of Collection Management, (stelkre@whitman.edu). Suggestions for electronic resources should be directed to Lee Keene, Head of Reference and Information Literacy, (keenelp@whitman.edu). Roger and Lee will collect your suggestions and, at the conclusion of our review in the spring, we will begin to consider these requests.
Questions about the process or the reasons for this project may be directed to Roger Stelk, Head of Collection Management, by phone 509-527-5909 or by email at stelkre@whitman.edu or Dalia Corkrum, Library Director, at corkrum@whitman.edu or 509-527-5193.