Re: Lists of core periodicals? Ian Woodward 18 Jan 2001 17:03 UTC
Prior to examining core lists, you might do one or more of the following (depending on the reference material and internally collected information available to you): 1. Do a search of the publications of each member of your faculty on Web of Science and the affiliated hard-copy citators, and compile a list of the serial publications that they have cited. Inspect as well the books and book chapters that they have published for like information. 2. Request reports from your inter-library loan staff on what titles have been requested (from other libraries or via document delivery services), how many times, and in which semesters. Pay particular attention to titles requested in order that photocopies might be added to course reserves and titles which appear in multiple semesters. 3. Compile a general list and subject-specific lists of periodicals rank-ordered according to the ratio of price to recorded use. If your library is like ours, you have not a few periodicals that are, in essence, dead inventory. Some of these are quite expensive. Such a rank-ordered list can function as a guide to the order in which you may wish to cancel subscriptions in order to meet budgetary constraints or substitute new titles. We provided such a list to our biology department (including the figures for price and recorded use per annum) as new faculty therein complained that their research program was not well supported by our collection. We received in return a wish list and a list of recommended cancellations, the latter of which was strongly influenced by the rank-ordering of the original list we provided. 4. Make use of Journal Citation Reports on CD-ROM , which has within it lists of titles broken down by discipline which can then be rank-ordered by the ISI impact factor. One can with this identify publications with a high impact factor that are not present in your library. I believe that the anatomy of scholarly communication between disciplines is sufficiently different that it is unwise to use a general list rank-ordered by impact factor. (If you use a general rank-ordered list you might come to the conclusion that your collection ought to consist largely of journals in molecular biology). Eugene Garfield has published some articles on considerations to take into account in using the Journal Citation Reports and I think it important to read some of these before attempting to use this resource. Also, the ISI has declined to issue such reports for arts and humanities journals, contending that the characteristics of information exchange therein render the Institute's published indices misleading. The foregoing would be of primary use in restructuring collections of print periodicals for which to track you have erected a consistent statistical collection system. The trouble is, so much is in electronic format and e-periodicals are seldom purchased a-la-carte. With regard to helping your faculty, I have a suspicion that many have a fair amount on their plate and that the contents of the library is not something to which most are willing or able to devote much sustained and structured thought. However, they have the specialized knowledge. I believe that in interacting with the faculty, it is important to present to them the feasible options and specify the constraints and necessary trade-offs. Just asking a member of your faculty, "ought we buy/cancel x?" will likely garner you an off-hand answer that does not take into account the opportunity cost to the institution of committing resources to that publication. The fiduciary responsibility to the institution of seeing to it that the periodicals budget is satisfactorily allocated is ultimately not theirs but the librarian's. Best of Luck. IW Ian Woodward <iwoodward@MAIL.COLGATE.EDU> -----Original Message----- From: Liu Liu [mailto:liuliu@USA.COM] Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 12:19 PM To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: Lists of core periodicals? Hi, I am new to the job of managing the periodical collection. Someone had commented that our periodical collection does not really support the educational programs our College offer. 1. Are there any lists of core periodicals for different educational programs? 2. As a librarian, and not a subject specialist, how can I help the faculty to select those periodicals which meet their curricular needs? Thank You Pauline Smith <liuliu@USA.COM>