Academic Library Budget Cuts – Are Serials Always First Resort?

While I agree with the sentiment that appeared in library committee minutes at our sister institution -

that is, if the choice is between periodicals and staff, obviously the staff need to be preserved -

I’m beginning to wonder, are serials always the first to be cut from academic library budgets during difficult times?

The academic library where I work is cutting

-staff positions (currently and hopefully only through attrition)

-computer footprint (college-wide cut of 11% of machines)

-some electronic resources (based on usage statistics and cost)

-all print journals that can be subscribed to in online format

-some memberships through which we receive serial publications

-almost all journal and monograph binding

-and they’re investigating moving some of our online journal subscriptions to a pay-per-view model

A moderate reduction to the book acquisitions budget will also be made.

You’ll begin to notice that the sub-department of serials (2 FTE), while we’ll likely be keeping our jobs, will bear the brunt of the cut in materials budgets.

So, we’ll have our jobs (I hope), but what exactly will we be doing when our job responsibilities are so reduced?

Is this similar to what’s happening at other libraries?

Decentralized Serials Administration

While I’ve already posted about journals check-in, I’m wondering how other library systems with multiple library sites manage serials in general.

I work in the ‘central’ branch at a college where there are two additional branch libraries.  A few years ago the decision was made to decentralize much of the serials administration, such that subscriptions, renewals, binding, and cataloging continued to be administered by the ‘central’ library staff, but check-in was managed by the branch libraries for titles which were shelved there.

This decentralized serials administration model poses problems for claiming missing issues, updating the cataloging for title changes and mergers (etc.), updating the frequency of the publication, and collecting journal issues for binding – all among the other exciting things that the world of serials throws our way.

These problems may all become non-issues as we move progressively towards an electronic-only serials collection, but in the meantime, it is a collection management mire.

Do you work with serials in a multi-site library system?  How does your library system handle serials administration?

When in doubt, Lyfguard

Publishers of serials like to keep things interesting -

two cases in point.

When ArtUS changed titles from ArtText in 2003, the first issue of the new title was called an ‘Inaugural Issue,’ and the subsequent issue was called ‘no. 1′.

This is further complicated by the fact that, in our holdings, we are missing issue no. 1 of ArtUS, but we retain the inaugural issue and issue no. 2.

To both effectively communicate to our patrons what we have in our holdings, as well as to bind these issues in a sensible way, we decided to

1) Lyfguard (laminate) the ‘inaugural issue’

2) Bind issues 2-10 together

3) Compose the holdings statement: Lib. has 2003 Inaugural issue, 2 (2004)- 14 (2007), 16 (2007)-

such that the inaugural issue will sit laminated on the shelf and all other issues will be bound.

Likewise, when Sinorama changed titles to Taiwan Panorama in 2006, the last issue of Sinorama was v. 31 no. 1 and the first issue of Taiwan Panorama was v. 31 no. 2.

One proposed solution was to bind the last issue of Sinorama (31:1) with volume 30, but volume 30 was already bound and we were hesitant to tear it apart again.

The solution we agreed to involved Lyfguarding 31:1 of Sinorama and binding Taiwan Panorama beginning with v. 31 no. 2.

Apparently, when in doubt, Lyfguard.

Are serials keeping your life interesting?  Comment and let us know!