Starting in June, UNB Libraries plan to dispose of print journals and other materials now available digitally, in part to save storage costs, and in part to retrieve space for other uses. This plan is consistent with the Collections Development (CD) Policy approved by the UNB Senate in November 2003: addressing library responsibility for stewardship and long-term preservation, the policy states that, "Under certain circumstances, local preservation may be limited to the intellectual content and not to the work in its original format. Specific examples would be [] journals that are digitized and available in a stable electronic full-text version." Thousands of bound volumes of print journals currently being stored, in both closed and open stacks, fit this description as, in the last decade, several electronic journal backfiles have been purchased outright (see table below). In addition to duplicated print journals, we are also considering the disposal of other types of print materials such as indexes and abstracts, as well as microforms, which are now available online.
Archival Journal Backfiles Owned by UNB & Location of Print Volumes
Backfile | Warehouse | Stacks | # of Titles |
---|---|---|---|
American Geophysical Union | 20 | ||
Annual Reviews | 18 | ||
Blackwell (now Wiley Online Library) | 546 | ||
Cambridge (CJO) | 176 | ||
Institute of Physics (IOP) | 93 | ||
JSTOR | 2,381 | ||
National Research Council (NRC) | 14 | ||
Oxford University Press (OUP) | 142 | ||
Periodical Archives Online (PAO) | 957 | ||
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) | 131 | ||
Sage | 381 | ||
Science Direct (Elsevier) | 543 | ||
Springer Online Journal Archive | 805 |
The Plan for Disposal of Redundant Materials (see link in sidebar) was presented to, and received the support of, the Senate Library Committee at their meeting of February 27. The plan is being shared widely, along with the lists of affected titles (see links in sidebar), to ensure full knowledge of the university community of the actions that are being taken, and to provide opportunity for feedback.
We are also considering disposal of some of the print indexing and abstracting tools which have been online now for over a decade. The difference with these online indexes (as opposed to the journal backfiles) is that we subscribe to them, i.e. we don't own them. We are not anticipating cancelling these research tools, but if funding constraints made that necessary, we would lose access. The question we are grappling with is this: Are faculty and students likely to ever go back to the print (with a 10-year-plus gap) in the eventuality that we cancel, or would they (you) be more likely to rely on other online sources to track down relevant citations? A list of print indexes and abstracts which are duplicated electronically (or were discontinued altogether many years ago) is also attached to this message, for your review. We are still internally discussing how to proceed with this category of materials, but any feedback would be appreciated. Comments can be directed to your liaison librarian or to Jocelyne Thompson, Associate Director of Libraries (Collection Services), by telephone at 458-7053 or by email at jlt@unb.ca.
Downloads
- Plan for Disposal of Redundant Library Materials
- JSTOR, PAO & Other Digital Archive Titles in Warehouse
- Science Direct (Elsevier) Backfile Titles in Warehouse
- Abstracts & Indexes in Warehouse
Feedback
- Liaison Librarians
- Jocelyne Thompson, Associate Director of Libraries (Collection Services)
- jlt@unb.ca | 506-458-7053