Re: alternatives to binding Mark L. Ferguson 14 Dec 2009 17:51 UTC
Hello: I am the periodicals librarian at the College of Saint Elizabeth, a small Catholic college and we have combined binding, boxes, microforms and electronic holdings for our archival storage, depending on the journal. In addition to financial restraint we also are restrained by shelf space since there is no storage for extensive collections of back issues. For this reason I have used a variety of strategies for different titles depending on how the title is used and what formats are available. Electronic holdings for back issues is my preference, since they are the most accessible to students, and take up the least space with no concern about deteriorating holdings, but I want to know I have ownership rights over these titles (such as offered by ECO) so that I don't have to worry about key titles disappearing from subscribed-to databases (which happened a couple of years ago with Sage publications). We subscribe to about half of our journals this way, but there are a number of important titles that do not provide this option. We still bind some selected titles, mostly key titles in the humanities that we want to keep for a long time, but this takes up valuable space and is probably the most expensive alternative. Boxing journals costs about a fifth of the costs of binding. The major drawback for me being the high acidic makeup of the boxes which in time will probably lead to brittle journals. You could of course use archival boxes, but with the added expense you might as well just do binding. What we have done is put in place a 25 year retention period on most of our science and social science journals (after getting the approval of the academic departments), since professors usually require students in the sciences to only use journals that have been published in the last 5-10 years. Since I am now only holding on to these titles for 25 years, I am no longer as concerned with the high acid contents of the boxes because the journals will not be in them long enough to have a perceivable effect. It also allows me to recycle boxes, providing additional savings (I have not needed to purchase any new boxes for quite a while.) Finally, I still think there is a roll for microforms to play in the storage of back issues of journals whose historic content may still be of value to student research (mostly in the humanities). While we no longer subscribe to any journals in microform, I still hold onto all the microform holdings in the humanities I inherited and have actually taken in some additional reels of microfilm offered to me from other libraries. Microfilm is easier to store and doesn't deteriorate. While its use is admittedly rare, those few researchers serious enough to hunt down the back issues of journals are usually willing to put up with the challenges offered by a microfilm reader. This has been the strategy that has developed in our periodicals department over the years and it seems to be cost effective while preserving those titles needed for undergraduate and graduate study. However, we are not a serious research library and what we are doing here may not be appropriate for larger institutions. Mark -----Original Message----- From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Scott Carlisle Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 11:43 AM To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: [SERIALST] alternatives to binding At Boston College Libraries we are reassessing our practices for binding periodicals. Like many libraries we are working toward migrating our journal collections to electronic format, and we are spending more on electronic preservation. In a recent project we experimented with shelving certain titles without binding, and found that while cost savings resulted, there was no labor saved due to the work required in our ILS for location changes. We'd love to hear what other institutions are doing: 1) Have your binding practices been affected by these issues or others, and if so, what changes have you made? 2) Have you tried any alternatives to binding, such as boxes, and has that been satisfactory? Thanks, Scott -- Scott Carlisle E-Resources & Technical Services Librarian O'Neill Library Boston College scott.carlisle@bc.edu