Abstract
Journal publishing has evolved and changed considerably over the years, leaving many libraries to grapple with analyzing and identifying the purpose and scope of these collections. After numerous discussions and an analysis of how the current print journal collection was being used, Kraemer Family Library at the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs decided to withdraw over 50% of the library’s print journal holdings in order to create a collaborative space for students. This article begins with an overview of journal publishing as it relates to academic libraries and the impact of electronic serials on the scope and purpose of a print journal collection. It then highlights the steps used to complete the project, and communication goals and methods employed to keep library staff members, faculty on campus, and other constituents aware of the changes taking place in the library.
INTRODUCTION
The University of Colorado–Colorado Springs (UCCS) is a vibrant campus and has experienced continued growth over the past five years. According to Homer Wesley, vice chancellor for Student Success and Enrollment Management, overall enrollment has increased by 25% between 2010 and 2014.Footnote1 UCCS is also celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2015 with a renewed commitment to student-centered initiatives. With this growth, an emphasis on student success means space on campus is at a premium. This is especially true for the library. Over the past several years, staff members at the library spent hours trying to find creative ways to enhance services and utilize space. At the end of these extensive discussions, a decision was made to remove the backfiles of bound periodicals.
This particular project was done with staffing already at the library, with the majority of the work being handled by technical services staff, circulation staff, and student employees. In Technical Services, the library has three staff members in cataloging, two staff members in acquisitions, and two staff members in serials and electronic resources. Circulation supervisors worked with student employees and volunteers who were responsible for physically removing the bound journals from the building. The Electronic Resources and Serials Librarian spearheaded this project.
Kraemer Family Library (KFL) is a mid-size academic library with a little over 1.2 million items. At the time of this project, serials made up 64,457 items of that total. Just like other libraries, KFL began moving from a print serial collection to an electronic one several years ago. This shift from print to electronic reflects the movement taking place nationally. With a focus on perpetual access to electronic serials, the library was able to identify and remove a significant number of the library’s bound journals and this space has been repurposed into a collaborative area used by faculty and students.
HISTORY
The way that KFL has traditionally collected and handled journal titles follows the national trends in serial publishing. While it is difficult to determine exact numbers as they relate to journal publishing, several trends are apparent. First, over the years there has been a surge in the number of journals being published; in 1953, Ulrich’s Periodical Directory indicated that there were 14,000 journal titles actively being published. Just fourteen years later the number had grown to 30,000.Footnote2 When narrowing the focus to journals published in the United States, in 1977 the number was 4,447 and by 1995 the number had jumped to 6,771. During the 1980s and 1990s, publishers began offering print titles electronically and approximately 15,668 refereed journals were available online by 2008. This is 65% of the 24,000 titles available at the time and since 2008 the percentage of journal titles available online has continued to increase.Footnote3 In fact, new publications and their online accessibility show little sign of slowing down.
In an article by Michael Mabe, he states, “… for most of the last three centuries, the growth rate of active peer reviewed scholarly and scientific journals has been almost constant at 3.46% per annum. This means that the number of active journals has been doubling every 20 years.”Footnote4 While this growth rate might have been reasonably sustainable for the better part of those three centuries, libraries were dealing with an additional problem beginning with the 1980s and 1990s. Not only were libraries grappling with an increased number of journal titles, they were also dealing with the price of those titles increasing, in many cases by double digits. At the same time, many libraries were experiencing a budget crisis making it impossible for libraries to continue with business as usual. According to the Association of Research Libraries, between 1986 and 2000, overall serial prices increased by 226% with the largest percentage of this growth in electronic serials.Footnote5
In 1993, a Library Journal survey found that 80% of public libraries and 99% of academic libraries offered their patrons access to electronic resources.Footnote6 Another solution to the serial crisis came about in the 1990s when publishers began offering libraries the “Big Deal.” In 2006 researchers found that 93% of U.S. research libraries had a “Big Deal” with at least one of the top five publishers. Of those five publishers, Wiley, Elsevier, and Springer had over 70% of the market.Footnote7 All of these factors—increase in number of titles, double digit cost increases, and availability of titles online—shifted the discussion in libraries to a debate on the pros and cons of “access versus ownership” and “just in case versus just in time.”Footnote8
Another significant movement in serial publishing impacting libraries is the Open Access Movement. In 1994, Steven Harnad, a Professor of Cognitive Science at Princeton University and the University of South Hampton proposed that scholars should make unpublished, unrefereed preprints of their articles freely available. Many consider this the beginning of the Open Access Movement.Footnote9 This was followed by the formation of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) in 1998. And in 2004, Congress signed legislation requiring National Institutes of Health (NIH)–funded research to be freely available.Footnote10 Since then the Open Access Movement continues to grow. In May 2015, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indicated that there were 10,546 journals, making 1,903,286 articles available.Footnote11
Many of the historical trends are continuing today. The number of journal titles continues to grow, serial costs continue to rise, and many library budgets are not keeping pace with costs. And electronic serials, for most libraries, have become the preferred format. For KFL, initiatives such as JSTOR, ProQuest Periodicals Archive Online, and Sage allowed the library to seriously consider removing backfiles of print journals from the library.
PROJECT PLAN
This project was initiated shortly after the results of a student user survey of the library informed library administration and staff that student seating was in great demand. Upon an informal review of lesser-used collections, it was decided that a comprehensive overlap study of the bound periodicals and their online counterparts should be performed with the end goal of reducing the bound periodicals collection by over 50%. In addition to the survey, factors leading to this decision included the increase in purchases of perpetual access journal archives, the successful completion of a similar project at the University of Colorado–Denver library, and a growing reliance on shared resources among libraries in the University of Colorado System as well as the Colorado Alliance consortium.
Print journals at KFL, whether bound or current, are not allowed to circulate. Therefore, use of these materials was tracked via tick marks entered into binders (one for current issues, one for bound volumes/microforms) before items were reshelved. This practice provided the library with a basis for determining which titles were continuing to experience high use despite the assumption that the bound periodicals collection was largely unused. High use for this project was defined as three bound volumes or more of a title used during the previous calendar year.
Throughout the planning process, criteria for removal changed many times because the library did not have a clear definition of what should be considered core to the collection, nor had standard definitions or guidelines been set for the collection before starting the project. It was finally determined that the criteria that would be used to determine if a title was core included titles to which the library had a current subscription, bound periodicals receiving high use, titles to which KFL held the last copy among the Colorado Alliance, and titles reflecting local interest. A set of evaluation criteria was added to the core definition to offset concerns raised by the subject librarians during the deselection process. Those criteria included perpetual access, off-site storage availability, and resource discoverability.
METHODOLOGY
Gathering Data
Many services were used to get to a working list of journal titles to analyze. The most reliable tools were entitlement lists from major publishers. Downloading these lists provided a starting point for performing an overlap study against the print holdings exported from Sierra, the library’s integrated library system (ILS). Title lists from the link resolver, Serials Solutions, were also used to gather details on online holdings. The task of verifying that online access matched the entitlement lists was performed by student employees.
Analyzing Data
The Electronic Resources and Serials Librarian used color coding to explain the extent of online versus print overlap as well as licensing language to clearly identify perpetual access titles and dates on spreadsheets sent out to the subject librarians. In addition, the core collection identifiers and evaluation criteria described above aided in the process of passing on for review only those journal titles which were candidates for deselection. Ultimately, it was the library dean’s decision on what would be kept. For example, if the librarians determined that a title could be deselected, the dean could trump the librarians’ decisions if it seemed appropriate to keep the title. This policy was used by the dean to retain journal titles where KFL held the last copy in the Colorado Alliance.
Using Excel
Because the project had a strict deadline and there was little time to prepare, it was determined that the best tool available for overlap analysis was Microsoft Excel 2013. Through extensive use of Excel, a master spreadsheet containing online holdings, library system holdings exports, and other details was created for the purpose of providing any information needed by subject librarians or other staff members involved in the project. The master spreadsheet began as an export of all journal titles, holdings, and other bibliographic details from the ILS.
From publisher entitlement lists, additional spreadsheets were developed to show where online holdings overlapped with print holdings exported from the ILS. Excel functions and formulas were used extensively to reduce the time spent manipulating the data to make it easily understandable to the deselection decision makers. The steps that were used, as well as an Excel demonstration, can be seen on the NASIG Slideshare site.Footnote12 Additional spreadsheets continued to be adapted from the master as the project moved through its various phases.
Removal Process
The process for physically removing the over 36,000 deselected volumes involved the creation of a spreadsheet, adapted from the master, clearly stating the journal titles and volumes to remove. The circulation department took over management of the list and student employees used color coding labels to mark the volumes to remove. The color coding labels doubled as a counting system: the number of empty label backing sheets indicated how many volumes had been pulled. Beginnings and ends of deselected runs were also tipped as a lead member of circulation verified the accuracy of the labeled volumes.
Once verified, the volumes were pulled and placed on a book cart, transported one level down to the outside dock, and placed in a forty foot container for recycling. Regular pickups for full containers were scheduled with the recycling company in advance, allowing circulation to plan out their staffing requirements for the duration of the project. The student employees could fill a container in two days. The removal process was completed over seven weeks during which seven containers were filled and transported to a recycling facility.
Catalog Updates
The cataloging and maintenance of periodical records in an ILS consists of multiple records including bibliographic records, check-in records (holdings records), item records, and order records. Each of these records were reviewed for deletion or updating when the associated title was selected for removal. KFL attaches multiple check-in records when a journal title is held in multiple formats. If the print format was fully deselected, but an online check-in record existed, only the check-in record and item record associated with the print holdings were removed. Additionally, accounting rules required the preservation of order records if payments or credits had occurred within the past three fiscal years. If these circumstances did not exist, and the full run of print holdings was being removed, the associated bibliographic records and all attached records for the title were deleted.
To ensure no records were deleted in error, another Excel spreadsheet was adapted from the master spreadsheet where the variety of ILS record situations was tracked. When multiple formats existed, check-in and item records for the print were deleted on the spot and noted as such on the spreadsheet. To complete the process, titles where the bibliographic and all associated records could be deleted were identified in the ILS with a unique code in a fixed field. This coding allowed for mass deletion using Sierra’s Create Lists function. The deletion of a bibliographic record and all associated records was recorded on the same spreadsheet that was used to track deletions of records from titles with more than one format. In essence, this spreadsheet was used to track all record deletions and was then used to count the number of journal titles removed, a necessary collection statistic that needed to be tracked throughout the project.
The final spreadsheet that was created from the master consisted of all the OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) numbers for titles which were completely removed. This was forwarded to cataloging for removal from our OCLC holdings.
Additional Considerations
While the project was planned as well as it could be under the time constraint, there were situations that arose unexpectedly and required attention. First, the existence of latest entry notation was overlooked before deleting some bibliographic records. This resulted in the possibility of some title holdings not being deleted from OCLC despite their being removed from the library’s holdings. In addition, some government document serials, which require special withdrawal processing, had been shelved with the bound periodicals. Because this detail was not identified in advance, some government document titles were removed in the same recycling stream as the other journals. Finally, it is not always safe to rely on the existence of a check-in record to find all the periodical/microform records in your ILS. KFL had around thirty periodical bibliographic records with no check-in records attached. These were missed in the initial export from the ILS.
Communication
The project plan and intended outcomes were discussed with the UCCS chancellor early in the implementation process. The chancellor agreed with the library dean’s suggestion to send an e-mail to university faculty during the summer. To mitigate the anticipated backlash by some faculty members over the removal of journals, they were given a chance to request deselected titles be transferred to their offices. Few journals were requested and KFL received no complaints from faculty members over the project.
While the student-run newspaper at UCCS published an article calling for a reduction of the library’s bound periodicals, the library administration chose not to respond because they wanted to communicate the project to faculty first. In hindsight, this was a poor choice as KFL was contacted by a local news reporter who was informed that the library was throwing away books. The dean fielded questions and allowed the news channel to record student employees tossing old issues of Chemical Abstracts into the recycling dumpster. After the story ran on the local news, KFL received no further complaints.
Overall, the project was successful and a positive article focusing on the changes to the library and the increase of student collaborative space ran in a fall issue of the student-run newspaper. Since the initial communication, faculty members have voiced little concern over the reduction of bound periodical materials and have expressed their support for the new collaborative space.
CONCLUSION
The deselection of print journals in favor of their online counterparts has become a popular option for academic libraries seeking a way to provide more study space. The breaking point for UCCS came on quickly, requiring an efficient process for deselecting and removing thousands of journals. The project was completed using a series of steps that could be replicated by other institutions facing similar space, staffing and budget constraints. These steps are summarized as follows: identify perpetual access online journal titles and holdings; identify print abstracts that have moved online; identify core electronic resources; perform print/online overlap studies starting with perpetual backfiles; share spreadsheets with collection development decision makers for withdrawal determinations; prepare recycling/disposal plans in advance; track collection statistics as volumes and titles are removed; update catalog records; update the link resolver; update local holdings details on OCLC; and communicate changes to constituents.
Using standard formulas available in Excel, and the functionality of a library’s ILS, a library can identify and create a list of potential journal titles available for deselection based on an overlap analysis and any additional criteria of interest to the library. For KFL, titles to which the library had online, perpetual access was used as the main criterion. In less than four months, the library was able to withdraw over 50% of the bound periodical collection and to repurpose that space into a collaborative study area. In the end, the UCCS community was supportive of the project and, as desired, the new space provides a more effective and positive use of the library.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rhonda Glazier
Rhonda Glazier is Director of Collections Management, University of Colorado–Colorado Springs.
Stephanie Spratt
Stephanie Spratt is Electronic Resources and Serials Librarian, University of Colorado–Colorado Springs.
Notes
1 Philip Denman, “Campus Updates Dominate October Forum,” Communique, October 2014, http://communique.uccs.edu/?p=16643.
2 William H. Huff, “The Acquisition of Serial Publications,” Library Trends 18, no. 3 (January 1970): 275.
3 Carol Tenopir and Donald W. King, “The Growth of Journals Publishing,” in The Future of the Academic Journal, ed. Bill Cope and Angus Phillips (Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2009), 110, 118.
4 Michael Mabe, “The Growth and Number of Journals,” Serials 16 no. 2 (July 2003): 193, http://serials.uksg.org/articles/abstract/10.1629/16191/.
5 Aaron S. Edlin and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, “Exclusion or Efficient Pricing? The ‘Big Deal’ Bundling of Academic Journals,” Antitrust Law Journal 1 (2004), 123 http://www.lexisnexis.com./lnacui2api/api/version1/getDocCui?lni=4DVM-KGM0-00C2-M3HN&csi=270944,270077,11059,8411&hl=t&hv=t&hnsd=f&hns=t&hgn=t&oc=00240&perma=true.
6 Ruth H. Miller, “Electronic Resources and Academic Libraries, 1980–2000: A Historical Perspective,” Library Trends 48, no. 4 (Spring 2000): 647, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=3595911&site=ehost-live.
7 Angus Phillips, “Business Models in Journals Publishing,” in The Future of the Academic Journal, ed. Bill Cope and Angus Phillips (Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2009), 94.
8 Ruth H. Miller, “Electronic Resources and Academic Libraries, 1980–2000: A Historical Perspective.” Library Trends 48, no. 4 (Spring 2000): 647, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=3595911&site=ehost-live.
9 Barbara F Schloman, “Open Access: The Dust Hasn’t Settled Yet,” Online Journal of Issues in Nursing 12, no. 1 (January 2007) http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24349402&site=ehost-live.
10 Ann Shumelda Okerson and James J. O’Donnell, eds., Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing (Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, June 1995).
11 “Directory of Open Access Journals,” https://doaj.org/.
12 Rhonda Glazier and Stephanie Spratt, “Space Case: Moving From a Physical to a Virtual Journal Collection,” Slideshare, http://www.slideshare.net/NASIG/space-case-moving-from-a-physical-to-a-virtual-journal-collection.