Community input sought regarding library serial subscription cancellations

Robert Nesmith
Communications & Marketing

Due to increasing subscription costs and University System budget cuts, the Georgia Tech Library and Information Center is examining its journal collection for potential subscription cancellations.

	Catherine Murray-Rust

A list of titles has been posted online, and the library is soliciting Institute community input for comments on these journals, asking which are crucial for course instruction and research, as well as to which titles faculty members contribute as editors, writers and reviewers. Journals by publishers Elsevier, and Springer and Wiley are not under consideration due to subscription contracts.

“Cutting serials that graduate students and faculty members need hurts,” said Library Dean Catherine Murray-Rust. “It’s not what libraries like to do. Some of these resources are absolutely vital to faculty and researchers.”

According to Collection Department Head Nancy Simons, 249 users have so far made 821 comments on 400 titles—roughly 30 percent of the journals on the list.

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of comments, especially from graduate students, whose input was not solicited during previous reviews,” she said. In conjunction with use and access data on the publications for the last few years, the comments will be used to make a decision on the potential cancellations.

	Nancy Simons

But, Murray-Rust says, in light of these events, something of a silver lining exists. Tech recently joined the RapidILL inter-library loan consortium, which grants the Institute access to a larger group of research libraries than its previous loan agreement. Princeton, Cornell, Texas A&M, Wisconsin and several research libraries in Asia all are part of Tech’s new network.

Instead of paying per journal, Tech pays a monthly fee for access to individual articles.
Turnaround time—the duration between an article’s request and delivery—with RapidILL in some cases has been a matter of hours instead of days. “RapidILL will also check the potential titles up for cancellation against their ‘holdings’ to see what duplications exist,” Murray-Rust said.

The comment period will be open through May 1. Cancellation decisions will be made during the summer, with a list of titles to be cancelled posted in September. Cancellations are scheduled to take effect in January 2010.