Marilyn CarneySerials Librarian

Wake Technical Community College

mmcarney@waketech.edu Phone 919-212-3836

Community College Libraries: How far do we need to go?

Print periodicals

versus

Electronic periodicals

Introduction

The purpose of this presentation is to discuss and hopefully resolve some of the issues facing community college libraries confronted with changing from print serials to electronic serials format. I hope together we can create some discussion and perhaps establish some guidelines which will be useful for future consideration when making these format changes.

In the beginning

Puzzled!!!!!

When I came to Wake Tech in 2004 and began working with serials, I had no idea how involved serials maintenance would become. I had not taken classes specifically on serials in grad school, therefore I had no knowledge of how to select and order serials or how to handle serials budgets or how to make the most use of budget funds.

Preparation

We knew we would need to: Consider cost. Get faculty input. Talked with fellow librarians who had knowledge of the desires of

some of our faculty. Be observant and mindful of the need for core curriculum resources. Make sure that the college administration was behind us.

We decided that the best time to start making the biggest and most changes to our collection was when our journal order was scheduled for renewal. It is also during renewal time that we gathered up all of the new journal requests we’d received during the year from faculty, staff and students.

What we did – how – why

There are several questions we had to consider such as:

•How do you involve or inform faculty.

•How will/has faculty reacted to the format changes?

•Should leisure reading (i.e. People, Newsweek, etc) magazines be eliminated fully or partially.

•What criteria should you use to bring about periodical format changes.

•Will your library attendance be affected?

I conducted a survey of North Carolina Community Colleges to see how they answered some of these questions.

Survey input

Here are some of the survey answers: In order to inform faculty of the periodical format changes, most

respondents said that they sent emails and/or met with faculty at meetings and,

when asked how their faculty felt about the changing format most respondents said that their faculty did not particularly care one way or another about the format changes.

Several respondents thought that attendance would decrease if a college converts strictly to electronic resources but more thought that it would remain about the same. A few felt that attendance would increase.

When asked if leisure magazines should be eliminated, the overwhelming response was “no”.

Number 1 criteria

The overwhelming criteria most survey respondents used to determine which print titles would be discontinued was lack of use.

The following are some of the criteria we used:

Eliminate titles found in other formats (i.e. databases)*

Do not eliminate recent print requests (example: Addiction Professional)*

Do not eliminate routed titles*

Eliminate titles that are rarely used and/or are not vital to curriculums

Eliminate titles that were requested by an individual who has left the college.

Eliminate some subscriptions that had difficulty with publishing (Example: Pre-hospital Emergency Care).

* exceptions

Seton Hall University study

From an article in Library Collections, Acquisitions & Technical Services 2002

To eliminate overlap between print and electronic titles whereby the transition to full-text without the paper subscription would not compromise the quality of the serials collection.

Seton Hall University’s plan contained 5 factors

The university library acquired access to several aggregated databases that provided broad subject coverage in many academic disciplines.

The university libraries tracks the electronic titles contained in and among its aggregated databases.

The university community has accepted e-resources and 24/7 anywhere anytime access as a major source of information.

Through meetings, email and face to face exchanges, the university libraries administration informed classroom faculty and faculty governance committees about the unnecessary costly duplication between print and electronic resources and it provided reliable information about the potential cost savings of eliminating this overlap and also presented the concept of electronic resources increasingly serving as the backbone of the journal collection.

Adequate preparation time for the transition.

The following is how Wake Tech libraries fit into the 5 factors of the Seton Hall plan.

1. The university library acquired access to several aggregated databases that provided broad subject coverage in many academic disciplines.

Wake Tech libraries has taken this approach as well, we have access to not only NC LIVE and SIRS, but ScienceDirect, History Study Center and JSTOR among others.

2. The university libraries tracks the electronic titles contained in and among its aggregated databases.

Through the library homepage Wake Tech libraries are able to access the desired database and in most instances obtain the list of titles currently available. But, we are not tracking the titles.

Title List Full-Text Journal Titles: Search for Full-Text Publications |

All titles - January 2007

History Study Center Contents Title List Sourcebook details - for reference articles, maps and historical

documents Journal details

The Seton Hall University plan (continued)

3. The university community has accepted e-resources and 24/7 anywhere anytime access as a major source of information.

Wake Tech students/faculty are able to access NC LIVE, SIRS and History Study Center remotely 24/7 by use of a password.

4. Through meetings, email and face to face exchanges, the university libraries administration informed classroom faculty and faculty governance committees about the unnecessary costly duplication between print and electronic resources and it provided reliable information about the potential cost savings of eliminating this overlap and also presented the concept of electronic resources increasingly serving as the backbone of the journal collection.

Wake Tech’s library director has communicated with faculty and administration about resource duplications and the need for cost effectiveness. We have contacted faculty by email and face to face to inform them of the usefulness of e-resources and the college’s plan to increase its e-resource collections.

We informed them that the move from print periodicals to electronic will not only be a financial asset for the libraries but will also be an additional learning tool for distance education students.

An example of the letter sent to some faculty members via email informing them of the serials format changes

Faculty/staff

In our efforts to stay abreast of current technology and make the most of our commitment to offer the best resources to our students, faculty and staff, the Wake Tech libraries are decreasing our collection of print journals. Many journals that we currently order in print are also available in electronic form. We are striving to use our budget funds to its fullest extent by providing the most updated electronic resources.

The journal that is currently routed to you, PUT TITLE HERE, is available in full-text on NC LIVE. We will be discontinuing our subscription to the print version starting in January 2007, but the electronic journal is available to you via NC LIVE.

Here is how to get to your journal:

On campus - Type http://library.waketech.edu. or from the Wake Tech homepage click on "Student Resources" -----> Libraries --------> NC LIVE --------> Welcome to NC LIVE (go to bottom of page see "Need a specific title?", click on it) ----------> type in JOURNAL TITLE.

Off campus - Type http://library.waketech.edu. -------> NC LIVE --------- put in school affiliation and NC LIVE password when asked --------. Welcome to NC LIVE (go to bottom of page see "Need a specific title?" click on it) ----------> type in JOURNAL TITLE.

.If you have any questions please contact me.

The Seton Hall University plan (continued)

5. Adequate preparation time for the transition.

Wake Tech libraries started preparing for the transition from print to electronic resources more than two years before making the actual move in that direction. We had already purchased access to NC LIVE and SIRS.

We started the ground work by examining our journals list to see which titles could be removed. We included the elimination of most of the leisure journals. When print renewal orders were placed, our plan (such as it was) for print elimination went into effect.

More survey responses

The final question of my survey was an inquiry of what determines which electronic resources the community colleges purchased. This resulted in two answers that stood out the most and they are 1. cost considerations and 2. resources picked because of curriculum needs.

These responses take us back to the initial reasons for our discussion of converting to electronic resources. Costs, again, being the major determining factor causing us to make the changes in formats along with the need to have the resources that are relevant to the curriculums. Remote access and ease of searches were also highly regarded as being determining factors.

Survey conclusions

My conclusions are that community colleges are following the trend of the larger colleges and universities in that they are turning more and more to electronic resources.

Their reasons are the same as the big schools but on a smaller scale. They want to make access easily available, they want to be cost effective, and they want to provide titles that are needed for their curriculums.

There is not much written information available to use as guidelines for changing periodical formats in the community college setting. Each community college has to create their own criteria as they go along. The information that is available, although applicable to 4-year colleges and universities, may be useful for our needs as well.

Related articles

William H. Wisner, reference librarian at Laredo Community College in Texas is a real skeptic of this move toward electronic resources.

From his article – Now, We’re Just Like Them -- in Library Journal, August 2006, he says “Today, the ….. book, with which libraries as we know them began, is the only thing that still makes the continuing existence of libraries necessary. Everything else can already be accessed from home, from journal retrieval to paying fines.”

“The corporate suits with their neat haircuts welcomed us (I assume here he is referring to the companies that entice us to buy the aggregated databases). They offered us calendars and tote bags and beguiled us from our dignity. Now, you’re just like us, they all said.”

Mr. Wisner seems to think that we are all being pulled blindly into using electronic resources by the powers that be to the detriment of the library as a whole. And by accepting this trend we are doing just what they want or, as he puts it, becoming “just like them”.

Related articles continued

Also, from an article in Inside Higher Education, the author writes:

“For most scholarly journals, the transition away from the print format and to an exclusive reliance on the electronic seems all but inevitable.” “But this shift away from print , in the absence of strategic planning by a higher proportion of libraries …. , may endanger the viability of certain journals and even the journal literature more broadly ----- while not even reducing costs in the ways that have been assumed.”

Again this author sees the writing on the wall but warns us to be careful not to be drawn in by all that we can gain by converting to electronic without having a plan and knowing the consequences.

Related articles continued

At Richland College in Dallas, Sharlee Jeser-Skaggs, head of reference says “Print is holding its own”. However, “When it comes to periodical access electronic is the overwhelming choice”. She adds, “A small community college library like Richland’s might be able to afford 250-300 subscriptions per year. But through our databases we can provide thousands and thousands of titles”. Richland is part of a consortium of seven Dallas-area colleges.

Richland sees that by being part of a consortium, they are able to provide access to many more journals than they could if they existed alone and only subscribed to print journals.

(From Library Journal November 2005)

Finally……some guidelines

From an article in Library Collections, Acquisitions & Technical Services 2002, we get a list of criteria for canceling print serials in favor of electronic from the University of Oklahoma that, if modified, could serve as guidelines for eliminating print serials in community colleges library collections.

Here is some of their list: Provider reliability/stability – Is the electronic provider sufficiently

reliable and stable?

Discipline/curriculum/research importance – Is the title significant to users?

Faculty input – Consult faculty on change of format.

Institutional commitment – Determine the significance of the title to the library.

guidelines continued Subject – Find out if subject requires retention of print in addition to electronic.

User preference/usage – Do users display a format preference and is that a concern.

Reproduction capability – Determine if the library/user can reproduce articles in a manner approximating the original when necessary.

Authentication – Must users be “authorized” with access being limited to IP recognition or username and password?

Monetary savings – Examine the actual cost of canceling print in favor of electronic.

Space limitations – Ascertain the space saved if print is cancelled.

The list created by the University of Oklahoma libraries seems a good place to start in the development our own individual community college guidelines. It encompasses much that should be considered in formulating a guide for eliminating print titles in favor of electronic.

A word of caution

In an article from Library Collections, Acquisitions & Technical Services 2002, based on the case study done at Seton Hall University libraries, discussion is raised about two developments driving academic libraries to analyze their serials collections. Diminishing funds and the availability of full-text electronic databases that span a wide array of subjects.

But with this ever increasing popularity of electronic full-text capability is the

realization that there are several shortcomings to consider. Such as:• the withdrawal of a title from the electronic resource without notification to the

vendor or the client --- remember the online content is rented not owned.

• the library runs the risk of losing access while at the same time accepting titles as part of a bundled package that may not be useful to the library’s patrons.

• some have observed omissions in e-journals that could compromise the quality of article content.

It is advised that librarians become educated consumers of full-text databases, particularly if we are going to be substituting electronic resources for print subscriptions.

and in conclusion……….

The move from print to electronic periodicals can be beneficial to the community college libraries as well as the college community, the distance education students and any others seeking to do research. Students who can not get to campus libraries can access most of the libraries’ databases remotely.

We’ve learned that when converting from print to electronic, we

should have a documented guide before proceeding. We should make sure we are making the best use of our budget dollars, be aware of archival information concerns, examine the stability of the databases we are purchasing and be mindful of the consistency of the content coverage in the databases.

If we can take these factors into consideration our transition from print resources to electronic should be less difficult.