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Re: Evaluation criteria for serial requests Bernice 13 Jan 1994 14:58 UTC

At Stephen F. Austin State University our major criteria for
purchasing new serials and cancelling old ones have to do with
availability of indexing and anticipated usage, particularly by
undergraduates.  We make no attempt to hold inhouse, journals that
would be used only by graduate students or faculty.  For these
patrons we try to give very good interlibrary loan and commercial
document delivery service.  We deliver to faculty offices.  We try to
subscribe to research journals only if usage is heavy enough to
make document delivery and interlibrary loan too expensive.  We also
offer limited interlibrary loan to undergraduates if we don't own the
material they need.

Faculty sometimes request journals that are not indexed in any of the
indexes we own or search online.  We almost never agree to this
unless it is a new journal that we think will have indexing soon.

 We have kept our percentage of the materials budget allocated for
serials to reasonable limits by being pretty hardnosed about sticking
to these rules.  Most of the collection development librarians now
feel that we have made most of the cuts that should be made and that
we should expand our serials holdings in a few areas for upper level
undergraduates in core areas that get heavy use.