Print only, anyone...

MPOW is trying to finalize a serials cancellation project. Since I gather and analyze usage statistics, I'm a big proponent of using them to help determine what to keep and what to cancel. Granted, there are some titles that need to be kept usage statistics aside, mainly those required to maintain accreditation. The rest, especially in times of declining budgets, to me, are fair game.

Faculty and librarians got a chance to lobby for those titles they considered essential. In a few cases, titles have been declared essential that have little or no usage. At least not electronic usage. There in lies the rub with usage statistics - we only have them for our electronic subscriptions (and a few vendors still don't provide them). Here until very recently, print and electronic was the standard subscription, so some titles could have print usage that I'm not aware of.

What then is the solution when the usage stats say no one is using this title and the faculty and/or librarians say we must have this title? The trend of course is to go electronic for everything. While most of the time, electronic subscriptions are equal in price or cheaper, there are still cases where print only is cheaper (Nature for example, at least at MPOW). So, my query is, if the usage doesn't back up the subscription, but the journal is still given priority, and print only is the same or cheaper, why not consider dropping the electronic piece and go print only? Even if the prices are the same, in some cases, it may still be better to go print only. Electronic only requires a license agreement and several vendors actually set a minimum spend on their agreements, meaning once you sign that agreement, nothing can be cancelled (spend level must be maintained for the life of the license agreement) or a title may be canceled as long as it is replaced with a title that is of equal or higher cost. These vendors may also prefer a multi-year agreement, which given the current budget situation, may not be doable for some libraries. In this case, the overall spend may be the same as electronic, however, there is increased flexibility in managing your subscriptions and there is no set spend amount to the vendor for the next three to five years. Added consideration here is the requirement for shelve space and potential binding costs. Not every vendor requires spending to remain the same, but for those that do, unless the publisher is willing to come up with a more flexible license agreement, libraries will have to look at other options and print only will have to be one of them. Right now, for MPOW, this mainly applies to journals that are not held in aggregators.

Part of this is simply thinking out loud. Trying to maintain electronic subsriptions is tricky when budgets are cut, but I sometimes wonder if we've gotten ourselves over a barrel with our reliance on electronic versions and the ease of use and access they bring. Maybe there are still times when carrying the print and not the electronic is what is most cost effective for the library. The content is still available to patrons, but the convenience is lost. Distance education is the one ara where electonic versions would, of course, win out over print.

Electronic vs Print?

It's a question that probably won't go away for awhile, especially for books. However, for journals I had thought perhaps that question had been answered. At least it seemed so at my previous job. There we had a collection development policy that clearly stated that for journals the preferred format was electronic. While it was the preferred format, it was also acknowledged that electronic isn't necessarily the best format. In many disciplines, Art comes to mind, electronic isn't always the best format and in some cases isn't an option.

So, I start the new job. Budget is looking static for the coming year (something I'm used to) and one of the ideas to reduce spending is to drop the print journals. It seems that for most titles we had electronic and print subscriptions and in some cases (as in newspapers) also receive the microfilm. Up to three formats for some titles and two for most. By going electronic only (mircofilm was addressed separately), the savings weren't as great as I'd hoped, but they were fairly substantial. My big surprise, though, was the response of the reference librarians. The term cancellation was bandied about as if they were losing content rather than a format, which is how they viewed it. Several pointed out that they showed the journal in instruction sessions. The actual journal. While I applaud this, the question I wanted to ask was if they also showed them the online version. We're not open 24/7 and I think it's just as important for the student to know how to access the online version as it is to see the print version.

For me it was a no brainer, if you subscribe electronically drop the print. I'd just gone through this exercise before leaving my old job (converting many print subscriptions to online and a few that were print+online to online only). There was concern for how the faculty would take it. So, it was decided that we would send a letter to faculty advising them of what were doing because we couldn't "cancel" subscriptions (read: formats) without telling them. I gently reminded them that we weren't going to be losing any content. In the end one faculty member requested that one title be retained in print. The majority didn't even respond to the letter. I'm betting a good number of them didn't even know we were still getting some of those titles in print.

We only cancelled titles that we have electronic subscriptions to or that we could subscribe to electronically. I've always thought that one should think twice before cancelling a title held in an aggregator's database and it's because of a lesson learned the hard way. However, as it appears the budget will be tight this year, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there aren't some titles held in an aggregators database that could be cancelled. There's always the risk the aggregator will drop the title (as happened with lesson learned the hard way) yet many aggregators are fairly stable with their content and some titles, while nice to have, are not core to our programs. Other titles in the same aggregators database or another database could probably fill the need if the title in question was dropped. It's something I'm still mulling over, but I wonder if that would be a better solution that not purchasing books, which I know some libraries have been forced to do due to budgets.

Journal review

It's nearing our fiscal year end. Add to this the fact that several publishers have drastically increased subscription prices and, you guessed it, we're reviewing journal subscriptions. About the lists: one list is for a move to print only; one list is standing orders for titles that are not available electronically, so we are reviewing to see if we should keep the subscription.

Naturally, usage and cost come into play for both. For those available full-text, the consideration is merely is the usage there. At MPOW, we're definitely moving toward electronic, so print only isn't really an option, even if it is less expensive. In most cases yes, the usage is there. In a couple of cases, no it isn't. For those titles with low usage, I considered where else it was held and given the current usage, is ILL an option. Well, one title had four uses. In addition, I looked at the title's value to the field. So, even though a journal may have low usage, it might not get marked for cancellation if it is considered a top journal in the field.

The second set of journal reviews is the one that was more interesting. Up until now, I'd never really considered stats for journal titles from an indexing and abstracting database, just overall database usage. However, when reviewing journal usage for print subscriptions, it helps to know if it's being used. My OPAC shows "historical browses" for titles, but there is some debate as to how accurate it is. So, I pulled usage stats by title. I was surprised by the results. Titles that seemed obscure in name and had very few browses in the OPAC had heavy usage in the database. Since the stats were returning abstract requests, it doesn't tell if the user actually went to the print journal, but it does tell me that the title is appearing in searches run in these databases. And, most were fairly high, even the "obscure" title.

I've also got one or two titles that don't appear to be indexed in any database we subscribe to, but that have fairly high browses in the OPAC. I'd prefer that my print titles be indexed somewhere, but the OPAC stats tell me that there are people looking for this title. I'm not ready to stop the subscription, but I can't really say I should look at purchasing a database for one title.

Overall, the exercise has been a good one. I think a couple of titles can be cancelled and I have a better feel for the usage on other titles.