Re: WSJ...was Do you still keep subscription of microfilms of New York Times and Wall Street J. ? Virginia Taffurelli 16 Nov 2006 13:04 UTC
Steven,
At the Research Libraries of The New York Public Library, we cancelled
microfilm for all JSTOR titles in 2000, but we do not bind the print
issues. We have a very strict deaccession policy and cannot discard
anything that is not on the approved list of titles replaced by commercial
microfilm. Instead of binding, we keep current issues for five years, then
bundle them and send them to our offsite storage facility. We keep the
microfilm run on site, but transfer any bound volumes we have for those
titles to offsite storage. In 2003, we further reduced our microfilm
subscriptions by almost 85% due to budget constraints. At the same time we
reduced our binding budget by almost half. We compared the list of
cancelled titles against our Serials Solutions A-Z list. For any titles
available in one of our full-text databases, we keep two years, then bundle
and send to offsite storage. For these titles, we do not send previously
bound volumes because the databases have various coverage dates.
I hope this is useful. If you would like any more details about the
process or our decisions, you can contact me offlist. Or you can read a
report about a NASIG pre-conference I co-presented:
Title:
Budgeting Lesson and Stories
Other Titles:
Report of a pre-conference program at
the 2004 NASIG conference
Personal Author:
Slight-Gibney, Nancy; Taffurelli,
Virginia; Iber, Mary
Peer Reviewed Journal:
Y
Journal Name:
The Serials Librarian
Source:
The Serials Librarian v. 48 no. 1/2
(2005) p. 31-7
Publication Year:
2005
ISSN:
0361-526X
Virginia
Virginia Taffurelli
Head of Technical Processing
Science, Industry and Business Library
The New York Public Library
188 Madison Avenue
New York NY 10016-4314
Phone: (212) 592-7234
FAX: (212) 592-7233
email: vtaffurelli@nypl.org
Steven Higaki
<Steven.Higaki@SJ
SU.EDU> To
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Libraries Subject
Discussion Forum" Re: [SERIALST] WSJ...was Do you
<SERIALST@LIST.UV still keep subscription of
M.EDU> microfilms of New York Times and
Wall Street J. ?
11/15/2006 03:35
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Please respond to
"SERIALST:
Serials in
Libraries
Discussion Forum"
<SERIALST@LIST.UV
M.EDU>
As a related question, when libraries obtain full text online access to
serial titles and cancel their microfilm subscriptions--what are libraries
doing with their microfilm runs? Are the microfilm being retained or are
they being discarded? And what is the rationale for the decision to
retain or discard?
Steven Higaki
Martin Luther King, Jr. Library
San Jose State University
One Washington Square
San Jose, CA 95192-0028
408-808-2436
shigaki@sjsu.edu
Steve Oberg <steve@OBERGS.NET>
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Re: [SERIALST] WSJ...was Do you still keep subscription of microfilms of
New York Times and Wall Street J. ?
Laura,
> We are currently considering cancelling our WSJ microfilm subscription
> due to high cost and little or no use.
>
> ProQuest offers WSJ online with "comprehensive coverage back to 1984".
> It is possible you could set up a trial of the product to determine if
> it would fit your needs. I would be curious to know the satisfaction
> level for those who subscribe to this product.
When at Taylor University (part of the same consortium -- PALNI -- as
your institution) we signed up for ProQuest's offerings for the NY
Times along with a trial for WSJ. ProQuest offers the Historical
Newspapers piece for many major U.S. newspapers. By definition these
databases go back to the beginning (e.g. NY Times goes back to 1851,
when it started). We made the decision to subscribe to the NY Times
backfile (via ProQuest Historical Newspapers, 1851 to approx. 3-5
years past as a rolling wall) -- including full text and images -- as
well as ProQuest's current NY Times database which goes from 2001 to
the present and is text only. This is all a bit complicated but at
that time, anyway, this is how it worked. We were able to pay for
this access to both the current and historical versions by cancelling
our microfilm subscription for the NY Times. The cost was about
equal. We were very happy with this decision and faculty and students
were impressed with the increased access and ease of use. As a
consequence, it became a popular resource.
We wanted to do the same for WSJ but just couldn't afford it at the
time without having additional funds.
If I were in a similar situation again, I'd do the same thing in a
heartbeat (ditch the microfilm to pay for better, fuller online
access). The split in terms of content and how it is presented is a
challenge for users to understand when it comes to searching the NY
Times. Users expect to have full text and images and in one database,
not two. I think ProQuest allows you the capability to do a combined
search but even so, it is not as intuitive as it could be for users,
in my opinion. So that's one downside. Another downside was that due
to the Tasini decision, missing articles in the online version for the
NY Times weren't available whereas they were available in the
microfilm copy.
One other thing: ProQuest at the time also offered the ability to
purchase perpetual access to a subset of the Historical Newspapers
version for each newspaper. I think the date range covered by that
was 1851 to the early 1920s. The limitation for more recent content
was simply due to copyright, I think. Here again, we would have
preferred to be able to purchase this because the NY Times is such a
high demand resource especially for undergraduates. But it was pretty
expensive. Here is where a consortial approach might be useful.
Steve
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve Oberg
Family Man Librarian
www.familymanlibrarian.com