Re: Accreditation lists Ian Woodward 18 May 2004 12:47 UTC
Provided that you do not have concerns about accreditation, the most satisfactory solution would be to rank-order your academic titles by cost-per-use and cut the titles on the bottom segment. That way, you provide the largest quantum of service for your expenditure. You could also cut non-academic titles as ancillary to the library's mission, but these titles are typically cheap and often well-used. The use statistics reveal the behavior of your full constituency, where as faculty opinion provides only the stated (and not revealed) preferences of one segment of it. Also, it is doubtful that professors have within their specialized expertise the tools to adjudicate the competing claims of the various academic departments with regard to expenditures on serials. Professors are busy with other things and their judgment can be clouded with considerations ancillary or irrelevant to serving colleagues, students or community borrowers. I suggest that your funds should go to the service of your domestic users, and that aid to other institutions is gravy. Thus, if your use statistics are so ordered that you can identify and exclude that portion of enumerated use devoted to fulfilling ILL request, you do best by your people to compute cost-per-use by excluding ILL fulfillments from "use". I will offer that truckling to 'political' considerations does not serve the interests of the institution, and suspect that it may be avoided more often than many librarians contend. IW I. Woodward Serials Office Colgate University Libraries 13 Oak Dri ve Hamilton, N.Y. 13346 Ph.: 315-228-7306 Fax: 315-228-7934 -----Original Message----- From: Schleper, Susan P. [mailto:spschleper@STCLOUDSTATE.EDU] Sent: Friday, May 14, 2004 12:37 PM To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: [SERIALST] Accreditation lists Hi all, We are in the process of reviewing our serials titles for discontinuation of some subscriptions - times are tough. We sent out a survey to all departments asking for their input on what would be there top/middle/bottom choices. I'm working with the bottom choices to compile a list of things to remove. Not all departments responded and a few of them - like Physics - have some of the higher priced journals that have shocking cost-per-use stats. However, I don't want to cancel something that might jeopardize a departments accreditation. Is there some place/resource that I can access that would give me an idea of what is needed for accreditation purposes? Or is it a case of "maintaining a collection adequate to support the curriculum" kind of thing? Thanks, Susan Susan Schleper Serials Librarian, Assistant Professor St. Cloud State University phone: 320 308-5525 email: spschleper@stcloudstate.edu