ABSTRACT: Serials collection management is more challenging for librarians in a medium-sized academic library. In this study, the author summarized the possible common situations shared in such libraries: limited shelf space, lack of on-site or off-site storage, budget constraints, study priorities, and shortage of staff. To find solutions, the author included further discussions on the journal deselection decisions and collection maintenance considerations in the local context.
Decisions on journal weeding seem more difficult in medium-sized academic libraries due to various reasons such as comparatively limited shelf space, lack of on-site and off-site storage, budget constraints, concentrated study priorities, as well as the shortage of staff time.
The deselection procedures of each library are unique. The Dr. John Archer Library at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada is medium in size among North American research libraries, with a collection of 2.4 million volumes. At present, about 95% of the shelf space for print serial back files is full. Consequently, a journal weeding project is under way.
1. Limited Shelf Space
Large academic libraries may have the option to keep both the print and electronic journals, maintaining a choice of access for different users. This is an impossible dream for many medium-sized university libraries. Invariably, they have to struggle for the spaces to accommodate recent arrivals and for future collection development as well. They are in effect forced to accept the opinion that "It is not essential that every library act as a print repository, especially if this means the removal of print journals that are duplicated in online archives and are common to the holdings of other libraries." (Bracke, Marianne Stowell, 2005, P61). Facing that inevitability, it is imperative to make rational serial deselection decisions. Thus, a long-term policy and procedures are needed to maintain consistency in the journal weeding practices.
2. Lack of On-Site and Off-Site Storage
For university students, the library is not only a repository of reading materials, but also an ideal place to do individual studies and group projects. The library should guarantee open and comfortable study spaces.
For medium-sized libraries with limited on-site storage space, and especially without off-site storage, how to deal with the weeded items becomes a complicated issue.
Serious questions arise such as whether the library is losing its traditional role of keeping knowledge or what if one day the electronic access to the content contained in the discarded serial back files is lost. Concerns like these constitute, more or less, psychological barriers for librarians in making their decisions.
3. Budget Constraints
Budget a deciding factor for many projects or tasks. For librarians working in a context of budget constraints, balancing activities is constant. For example, the serial librarian needs to balance between present subscriptions and new subscription proposals, between the print subscriptions and other formats, and between the cost of the journal weeding project and the amount of space saved.
Medium-sized university libraries participate actively in consortial cooperative collection development to maximize their limited purchasing power. It makes journal weeding activities more complicated when librarians try to identify how stable and reliable the present licensed e-resources are.
4. Study Priorities and Interdisciplinary Studies
Program and course design at a medium-sized university has its own strengths and characteristics to reflect more of the local community's needs. It might not be as comprehensive as large universities, but attractive to their own students. Library collections at medium-sized universities should reflect such characteristics. Responding proactively to students' needs is an important factor in print journal deselection decisions. Study priorities have profound influences on libraries and prompted them to accommodate students' behavior patterns of library usage.
On the other hand, study priorities in a medium-sized university tend to be unstable elements, influenced easily by factors like change of faculty in a small department, student enrollment, or interdisciplinary cooperation.
Recently, interdisciplinary studies have become a trend in medium-sized universities. The communication and cooperation among faculty are encouraged to create new areas of interest that could fully utilize the present resources on campus.
Therefore, librarians have to view collections in both the traditional subject-oriented way and an interdisciplinary perspective in the process of print serial withdrawal.
5. Short of Staff
Librarians at medium-sized universities usually perform multi-tasks. In their busy schedules, weeding projects might fail to capture enough attention until the last minute. Suddenly, they realize that there is no time and/or staff to carry out the project, especially when there are some emergencies. For example, a big donation is waiting at the door when the library finds out that the shelf is almost 70% full. To avoid such situations, the best solution is to make deselection a routine task.
The journal weeding project at the Dr. John Archer Library started during the summer vacation, a good time when users' requests were the lowest. The purpose of weeding was to gain enough shelf space for future donations and subscriptions as well as to improve the quality of the collection. To solve the problem of limited shelf space and on-site storage, the Library installed compact shelves to accommodate journals removed from regular shelves but needed to keep. A decision has to be made regarding which titles to keep in the compact shelves and which ones to weed directly. As there is no off-site storage, the directly weeded journals will be either discarded or offered to other local libraries.
The criteria adopted at the Dr. John Archer Library regarding journal deselction were as follows:
1. Study Priorities and User Behaviors
In examining the list of journal titles, those journals subscribed to support the courses taught in the past were first identified. Due to the course change and faculty relocation, those journals are no longer valuable to current users. To monitor such changes on campus, frequent communications with the subject liaison librarians and the faculty is maintained.
It is a consistent preparation process for librarians to monitor the change of study priorities and interdisciplinary study focuses on campus. It involves great amount of communication with the faculty and frequent consultations with other subject liaison librarians and library representatives. Librarians planning print serial deselection should synopsize all the information he or she has collected, using a broader view beyond narrow subject scopes to identify the real "disappeared" study priorities and the seemingly "disappeared" priorities in one area but still existing in another area.
User behaviors are also worthy of attention.
A literature review helped to illuminate user behavior patterns. Here are a few interesting trends: "They (medical faculty) tend to read fewer titles; they read perhaps an entire journal; they tend to read higher proportions in print than electronic form than others do, and they tend to spend a very short time per article". (Tenopir, 2002, p.115) Maintaining the current print periodicals in health studies might be necessary so that users could browse the entire journal at any time and any place they like. For engineering faculty, "when they find one or two that are particularly useful, they spend a lot of time reading each individual article". (Tenopir, 2002, pp. 112-3) E-journals are the preferable format for them because they could browse the content and download their preferred articles for further reading.
More information comes from frequent communication with faculty about their teaching and research. Faculty teaching courses on language acquisition might request reprints for journal articles because they might serve as intensive reading materials for students. It is found hard to replace prints with their e-versions because browsing in foreign language listings is rather difficult. However, many humanities journals will be kept in the collection because more faculty members appreciate the prints and because inadequate online replacements are available. Core journals with reliable online back files are identified and the prints are weeded because there is a tendency among humanities and social sciences faculty and students to use more e-journals.
2. Duplication and Physical Situations
Librarians selected obvious duplicates and worn volumes. They identified large sets of back files on the shelf. These are usually the core journals worth special attention and more intensive researches. Such research work on these titles is reserved for librarians instead of student assistants.
3. Availability of Stable Electronic Databases
Extra caution has been devoted to the evaluation of online archive of journal back files. Till now, only a few big publishers and vendors that offer electronic-archiving are worthy of trust. Even so, as cautioned by Bracke, "electronic journals do not always duplicate the print exactly. For instance, advertisements or erratum may not be included or images may not be adequately reproduced." (Bracke, Marianne Stowell, 2005, P.61). Therefore, each link as well as the first and last issues of each journal and their illustrations must be checked before the print versions are withdrawn from the collection.
4. Availability of a Regional Off-Site Storage Site
The accessibility to BARD (Book and Record Depository) at the University of Alberta serves as a reliable backup for the print serials deselected at the Dr. John Archer Library. In case that there are requests for the content contained in those weeded journals, a staff working in BARD has been employed to make copies and deliver the content efficiently. Thus, during the deselection process, the BARD holdings are checked to make sure that they have the print back files.
Seeking the external cooperation for an off-site storage might demand great regional consortial efforts but it is worthwhile.
5. Availability in other local library holdings
During the process of journal weeding, the holdings of other local libraries are checked. For some journals targeted for weeding either because of their duplication with online access or because of course changes, the catalogue of BARD and that of other three local libraries are checked to examine their holding situations. The related libraries are contacted to offer what is to be weeded. One of the principles of the Library is to ensure the uniqueness of our collection and at the same time, to maintain the collection with a broader view of the regional collection development.
On the other hand, with the knowledge that other local libraries have the duplicated holdings, librarians at our library feel more confident in weeding our own print copies.
6. Newsletters
Some periodicals are of the nature of newsletters and bulletins, announcing new developments and supplying current news in a specific field. These periodicals are examined for their contents carefully to see whether there are featured articles, valuable reviews, or mere news information with little archiving value. For the latter, issues of the latest 5 years will be kept in the collection.
7. Journals that ceased
Short-runs that have ceased from subscription are usually the ones to be withdrawn. One thing worthy of attention is related to those "seemingly ceased" journals. As matter of fact, these journals have just undergone several title changes. For the libraries that employ student assistants to check catalogue holding for a journal weeding project, it is definitely necessary for librarians to review their work.
8. Current Journals
Currently subscribed print journals are compared with their corresponding e-versions available in the databases that are identified as stable for archiving and services. After consulting cautiously with the subject librarians and faculty, the collection librarians choose to stop only the print subscription of those journals with back files over six years old in the electronic format. For those journals that are comparatively new, the librarians will wait and see how stable they are in aggregated databases. Therefore, on the one hand, more shelf space will be available. On the other hand, the saved subscription fees could be used to balance our collections and strengthen their uniqueness.
9. Replacements
To save the shelf and storage space, other possible formats (e.g., microforms) are looked into with a view to replacing the print back files. Such information is saved till the end of the fiscal year when one-time purchases are made with possible remaining budget. To make microforms more user-friendly, the Library has selected microfilm readers that allow users to digitize microform content, burning to CDs, saving to their personal storage space available on the internet or sending to themselves by emails.
Many of the actions described above merit further discussion, but reality forces us to move on. Knowing that the impact on the whole collection may not become apparent for several years, it would be wise to proceed cautiously, expecting for more research and communications among librarians in similar circumstances.
[2] Easton, C. Doubly. (2001). bold – replacing print journals with electronic versions. Serials Review, 27( 3), 97-101.
[3] Hughes, J.A. (2002). Issues and concerns with the archiving of electronic journals. Science & Technology Libraries, 22(3/4), 113-36.
[4] Johnson, Qiana. (2004). User Preferences in Formats of Print and Electronic Journals. Collection Building, 23(2), 73-77.
[5] Klaus, G Altmann, & Gorman , G.E. (2000). Density of Use as a Criterion in the Deselection and Relegation of Serials. New Library World, 101(1155), 112.
[6] Parrish, Marilyn McKinley. (1996). Deselection of Inactive Serials. Serials Review, 22(3), 49.
[7] Scherlen, A. (2004). Courage of our convictions: making difficult decisions about serial collections. Serials Review, 30(2), 117-21.
[8] Tenopir, C. (2002). Electronic or print: are scholarly journals still important? Serials, 15(2), 111-15.
| Liu, Yng. (2007). Journal Deselection at a Medium-Sized Academic Library. Chinese Librarianship: an International Electronic Journal, 23. URL: http://www.iclc.us/cliej/cl23liu.htm |