Colgate University Libraries
Serials Review and Cancellation Project
Spring 2009

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Background

Three years ago we worked extensively with the faculty on a serials review project and approximately 263 subscriptions valued at $204,000 were cancelled.   The highest cost per use journals were targeted at the time.  The elimination of the eleven highest cost per use titles yielded an immediate savings of $111,000.  While we planned for increased demand for articles through interlibrary loan, that demand never materialized.

The 2006 cancellation provided the impetus for the Library Advisory Committee to obtain a vote from the faculty for the University Budget Committee to fund the annual rate of inflation for library materials through fiscal year 2012. The budget committee’s subsequent agreement to this motion was predicated on a stable economy. The current downturn, however, has voided this arrangement.

This year’s serials review:

The Colgate Libraries are in a much more challenging spot now than we were in the spring of 2006.  At that time we were able to balance our budget by canceling a relatively small number of journals. Because we had not done a cancellation project in 15 years, much of what we cancelled was no longer relevant to the curriculum.  We face tougher decisions in our next cancellations, and a larger number of titles will be under review. 

Two factors influence the need for the present major cancellation review: potential budget cuts and anticipated inflationary costs for serials. For the next fiscal year, the budget for operations and materials has been reduced by 5%. Moreover, inflation for library materials has averaged 8%, well above the rate of consumer inflation. The two factors amount to a projected shortfall of 13%. Regrettably, the Libraries must prepare to reduce their level of acquisitions and subscriptions by this amount for next year based on usage and cost data. The review objective is to find $135,000 in serial cancellations for the 2009/2010 fiscal year and to prepare for likely additional cancellations in the following year. We also plan to purchase fewer books, CDs, and films, cancel several database subscriptions and build in additional money to strengthen document delivery. We must notify our subscriptions vendors of our intent to cancel by this June with the effective date for the cancellations being January 2010.

Over the past two months Library faculty have been reviewing cost and usage data for all materials which are billed on an annual basis. We have sought to identify titles whose absence would do the least damage to the teaching mission of Colgate. We need the faculty’s help in ranking these titles in order of importance to the curriculum and student/faculty research before we initiate subscription cancellations. We have prepared lists for your review based on this methodology:

Looking forward

We will continue to maximize the use of consortial discounts for information resources negotiated in collaboration with CU partner libraries, and eliminate duplicate formats wherever possible (e.g. canceling print and microform editions of journals that are available electronically). Next fall, we are preparing to initiate a new, expedited interlibrary lending service through ConnectNY and the Oberlin Group Consortium which would potentially cover a significant percentage of journal article requests. Called RapidILL, it has as its goal a 24-hour turnaround time from the time the request has been placed to it being received by the requestor.

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Letter from Joanne A. Schneider, University Librarian

Final Cancellation List Letter from Joanne A. Schneider, University Librarian

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Instructions for Departmental Chairpersons

By April 8th, you will have received a letter from your library faculty liaison with a list of journals in your area which are potentially up for cancellation over the next two years.

• Please encourage the faculty in your department to review the journals listed on the PDF sent by your liaison. They may also view the entire list of journals in their field. See FileMaker database below.
• We would like the department as a whole to rank the journals on the attached PDF in order of importance for your teaching, student learning, and student/faculty research. We also invite your suggestions of alternate titles in your field that may be considered for cancellation.
• Titles that you believe should not be cancelled should be accompanied by notes that explain the importance of the title for your work and the curriculum..
• Return one ranked list to your liaison by April 30th.

If you have questions about the review please contact your Liaison Librarian. Emily Hutton-Hughes, Head of Collection Development, and Joanne Schneider, University Librarian would be willing to meet with department representatives at the request of the chair. Project information has been vetted by the Library Advisory Committee composed of Deborah Knuth Klenck, Jyoti Khanna, Vijay Ramachandran, Ann-Marie Guglieri, Judith Oliver, David Gregory, and Joanne Schneider.

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Methodology used for identifying journals for potential cancellation:

• For this review, subscriptions include journals, magazines, newspapers, databases, monographic series, abstracting and indexing services, reference resources, and other services for which we are billed on an annual basis.
• Titles with less than an average of 5 uses per year and with a cost per use greater than $15.00 were added to the review list. We looked at a variety of ways in which the community accesses a journal including print use, publisher’s web sites, journal archives such as Jstor, and aggregator databases such as Academic Search Premier. Use from all these areas has been combined to provide a composite view of use. Where online use was unavailable or questionable, click through statistics (number of times the journal was selected) were examined to determine use. 3 years of print use statistics were used (divided by 2) in comparison to 2 years of online to compensate for the traditional print use undercount. In many cases we checked use statistics on the most recent three volumes.
• Titles with a cost per use of greater than $100 / use were added irrespective of the number of uses. We consider recent trends in the use of a titles and pulled titles off the list for such factors as
  • The journal supports a course which is taught every 2 or 3 years
  • The journal is newly available online and thus electronic access is for obvious reasons low.
  • Obvious errors or problems with data.
  • Whether or not there was another higher use journal on the same topic or lower cost per use journal.
• We also considered cases in which current issues of a journal are receiving very low use, but use on JSTOR is high. In some cases it may be sufficient to offer access only through JSTOR even if there is a three year embargo.
• Journal packages (Project Muse, Oxford, etc) were assessed for cost effectiveness compared to individual subscriptions. Packages which would not be cost effective to break up because subscribing to individual titles would be more expensive were excluded from review.
• We agreed to protect anything of local historical interest such as the Hamilton newspaper.
• In reviewing database for possible cancellation we will focus on databases with substantial content overlap or where alternative access to information is available in another product.

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FileMaker database with cost and use data for all subscriptions

Connect to the web page with the Filemaker Database and instructions

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Final List of cancellations

Jan. 2010 cancellations

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TIME LINE

• April: Potential cancellations will go out to departments for their feedback. Departments will be asked to rank journals according to their importance to the curriculum and to student/faculty research.
• May: Library faculty will review the lists in the context of your rankings and comments and develop a final list for cancellation that will be shared with the faculty as a whole prior to our sending it to our subscriptions vendor.
• June: Notify subscription vendors of our cancellations.
• Jan. 2010: Cancellations take effect.

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Other useful links

SPARC : the Scholarly Publishing & academic Resources Coalition

SPARC's Author Rights Initiative

SPARC: Journal Pricing