Edith Starbuck (speaker), Sharon Purtee (speaker)

1. Managing
Journals by
Committee
Sharon Purtee
Edith Starbuck
University of Cincinnati
Health Sciences Library

2. Serials Collection Development
In the past:
• Cut
• Add
Now:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Review formats
Rights management
Cost per use
Embargoes
Platforms
ILL restriction
Discovery layers

4. Does your library
have a dedicated
serials librarian?

5. Has your library
lost staff?

6. Year one:
2011 for 2012
subscriptions

7. Leslie
Sharon
Charlie
Edith

8. Dear Faculty and Grad Students,
Please tell us what journals to buy…

10. In the mean time…
• What to cancel? - print journals!
• Ramp up ongoing move from
print to online

11. Compiled list of print journals
• Saved as spreadsheet to shared drive
• Divided list to look for:
• Existing & reliable online sources
• Current access, not embargoed

12. Also…
• If print and online subscription, option
to cancel print?
• Duplication among UC libraries?
• If no existing online access, online
available?
• At what cost?

13. ILL Requests from Faculty
• Clinical Gastroenterol Hepatol 5
• Clinical journal the American Society of
Nephro 5
• Clinical Neurosurgery 5
• Clinical Otolaryngology & Allied Sciences 5
Comput Aided Surg 5
• Contrib Microbiol 5

14. Process
• Divided tasks
• Set deadlines
• Gathered information
• Organized in spreadsheets
• Met monthly

15. Just a few spreadsheets…

16. Cancellations
• Cancelled 227 print titles
• Next step –
• Select new journals

17. Getting Quotes
•
•
•
•
Single journal subscriptions
Journal packages
Contact vendors and jobbers
Divide and conquer!

18. New Journal Decisions
• Available online?
• Able to unbundle print and online
subscriptions?
• What’s the increase in cost?
• How many faculty journal requests?
• Available in a journal package?

19. New Titles
• Spent $70,000 on new titles
Such as -

20. Oops, we can’t do that after all
•
•
•
•
Changes in provider
Only available as print/online package
Cost prohibitive to order online version
Only available in a package; we wanted
one title

21. Year 1 Assessment:
the Pluses
• The faculty had a say in what we added to
the collection
• We engaged them when we had to decide
between similar titles
• They understood the process better
• We were ready to do it all again

22. Lessons Learned
•
•
•
•
Start the process earlier
Meet more frequently
More lead time for actual cancellations
Communicate decisions clearly & meet
with all involved

23. Year Two:
2012 for 2013
subscriptions

24. Now we are 5!
Leslie
Sharon
Charlie
Edith
Kristen
• Newly hired Informationist joined
the group

25. Year 2 Process
• Started 2 months earlier
• Solicited journal requests
• Compiled list of all print titles
• ILL most requested
• Divide and conquer

26. Year 2 Changes
• Budget flat – now needed to look at
online journal subscriptions & databases
• Obtained first usage and cost per use
for HSL online titles - no mean feat
• Intriguing numbers

27. Some Considerations
• As member of a state consortium – no
choice but to continue journal packages
• University level journal packages – again
no choice but to continue

28. Has your library lost serial
or collection funds?

29. Is your library a member
of a consortium?

30. Cancellations
• More print titles
• Some online titles
• Put other online titles on watch list

31. Funds for New Journals
• Cancellations not enough to cover new
title requests
• Some new monies available from
Academic Health Center reorganization
• End of renovation furniture payments

32. New Titles
• Had to balance between clinical and
research requests
• Included ILL requests > copyright limits
• Not as many large package purchases

33. Year 2:
• Faculty & graduate students pleased to
be asked for recommendations
• Understood & accepted decisions
• Online journal usage interesting

34. More Lessons
• Decisions more challenging
• More of a balancing act

35. Year Three:
2013 for 2014
Subscriptions

36. Prior to Reconvening
• Ok – that didn’t work out
• As we promised, added back 2 titles
• Faculty and ILL delighted

37. Now we are 5 ½ !
Sharon
Leslie
Charlie
Kristen
Peggy
Edith

38. Year 3’s Greatest Challenge

39. Options Limited
•
•
•
•
No new funding for journals
Very few print titles left to cancel
More online subscription cancellations?
Reallocate funds?

40. Year 3 Process
• Reassigned monograph funds
• Worked with print & online title lists
• Assessed online cost per use
• Again ILL most requested
• Looked at ILL article pub date
• Print journal review

41. Year 3 Changes
• Identified ISI Impact Factor and Scopus
Evaluation Scoring for each journal title
• Checked for top 5 journals in subject
areas taught in all 4 colleges

42. Cancellations
• Print titles not directly supporting the
curriculum
• Print titles not moving from the shelf
• Some online titles from watch list
• Online journals with increasing cost-peruse ratio
• Online low use journals where “buying by
the drink” stretched funds further

43. Does your library primarily
use "by the drink" access?

44. Where do you go for "by
the drink" access?
a)Publisher
b)“Get it Now”
c)ILL networks

45. New Titles
•
•
•
•
Fewer titles requested, many out of scope
Fewer titles added
Selected based on journal impact factor
Also on ILL requests – weighing cost of
subscription vs cost of articles requested

46. Year 3
• Reaffirmed reliability – restored
needed titles
• Faculty & grad students continue to
appreciate openness of process

47. Again More Lessons
• Not always a match between ILL
requests and journal requests
• Metrics help difficult decisions & makes
the process more transparent

48. Next Year
• Only online journals to cut
• New funds are needed to add titles
• Cancellations will barely take care of
inflation & publisher increases

49. Hope Ahead?
• Newly formed Dean’s Task Force on
Collection Funding
• Charged to review allocation funding
across all libraries
• We hope that HSL will benefit from this
review & recommendations

50. Requests
Add
Cancel
After 3 cycles
of managing
journals by
committee,
what have we
learned?
Impact
Assess
Use
Cost

51. Lesson One
If the library does not subscribe to
the one journal the faculty
member wants, the library doesn’t
have enough online journals

52. More Lessons
Faculty & grad students:
• Love to be asked what journals to add
• Do not know how to find the journals to
which the library subscribes
• Request titles outside the scope of the
collection

53. Other Considerations
• Journal embargos in databases are
getting longer
• Purchasing individual articles more
expensive than buying a subscription
• Proxy access is not always included in
package subscriptions

54. Final Lessons
• Ground is constantly shifting
• Journal management is ever more
complex and involved
• Open access will not make the
process any easier

55. But we will continue to work
together to manage the
collection based on use, cost,
and impact
Librarian Artwork from Marilyn Johnson’s This Book is Overdue

56. Thank You!
Sharon Purtee sharon.purtee@uc.edu
Edith Starbuck edith.starbuck@uc.edu
University of Cincinnati
Health Sciences Library