The UNH Library: meeting the demands of the University Community in a changing environment
(Printed in the Campus Journal on February 17, 2005.)
Claudia Morner, University Librarian
cjmorner@cisunix.unh.edu
Supporting the three fold mission of teaching, research and public service has been an ongoing challenge for Universities. Recent changes in academic publishing and scholarly communication have exacerbated the problem. The Association of Research Libraries reports the following statistics:
- Journals have gone up in price an average of 9% a year since 1986, while the consumer price index has increased only 3.3% a year
- Libraries spent 170% more to purchase 6% fewer journal titles in 1999 than in 1986
- Commercial journal publishers are expanding their market control through acquisitions, mergers, and the purchase of individual titles from learned scholarly societies (Association of Research Libraries)
Other academic libraries have been trimming their journal holdings annually for the past several years.
- The Cornell University Library, for instance, has focused its efforts on simultaneously reviewing its titles from the publisher Elsevier and educating faculty about their role in the scholarly communication process.
- Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries, in reviewing their budget costs, moved to educate their community about journal cancellations because they cannot afford to continue to receive the same titles in two formats, print and electronic.
- Likewise, libraries are not only examining titles in the sciences, but are canceling the print copies of journals that are also available in ProjectMuse, as at the University of Notre Dame.
At the University of New Hampshire, we are seeking to balance and control the materials budget by implementing all of the above. We are reviewing the collection and materials budget to ensure that they support and reflect the University’s academic efforts by examining the journals by subject and usage data. We are also examining the use of the titles that we receive from publishers like Elsevier. In addition, for FY05, we will be recommending the cancellation of all of the print titles in Project Muse and most of the titles in BioOne, because these platforms provide reliable access to the journal titles in their databases.
We will continue to improve electronic access through interlibrary loan and document delivery. In addition, the UNH Library introduced a new document delivery service,
Infotrieve, in August 2003 for faculty and graduate students. Infotrieve is a more unmediated service than Interlibrary Loan, and we have found that except in the case of three journal titles, it has been more cost effective for the Library to buy the content by the article than through a traditional subscription. A turnaround report for the eighteen months since it was introduced reveals that 66% of the requests were filled and sent electronically within the first day.
There are many challenges ahead, but in light of requests by faculty and students to shift to more electronic journals, it is necessary to address them on an ongoing basis. Moreover, the UNH Library is committed to sharing all information regarding this process.
