UCSB Library Faculty Serials Review:

Serials Review Project Update

June 1, 2009

The tentative cancellation review lists for broad disciplinary areas are now available for faculty review until June 15th. Faculty comments on this tentative list will be used to help determine necessary cancellations for 2010 subscriptions. If adequate funding is available beyond the target cancellation level required to stay within budget, faculty recommendations for new subscriptions will be considered after the new fiscal year begins.

Introduction & Faculty Letter

April 21, 2009

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

The Library needs your help in conducting a review of the Library's journal subscriptions during Spring Quarter. While some of you have worked with your librarian subject specialist to revise subscriptions in the last couple of years, it has been many years since the Library has conducted a broad review of journal subscriptions. In that time, thousands of journals relevant to your research and teaching needs have become available online through the Library's participation in UC system-wide licensing of electronic journals through CDL (California Digital Library). It is time to review the Library's journal subscriptions that are not purchased through CDL.

There are two goals for this review:

• To ensure that our funding is directed to providing access to the journals most critical to your research and teaching needs.
• To identify the subscriptions with the least impact on your research and teaching that can be canceled to stay within our collections budget.

Our collection budget projections indicate that the Library needs to cancel a minimum of 10% of the expenditure of journal subscriptions we do not purchase through CDL licenses to stay within budget for the next two fiscal years and to mitigate further erosion of our ability to purchase monographs and other resources. We have reached a point where our collections budget is unsustainable, primarily due to absorbing many years of high journal subscription inflation rates. Some cancellations and alternative strategies to provide access to relevant scholarly information are needed. You can be assured that articles from any canceled journals will be available to you through interlibrary loan, most often delivered directly to your desktop. Fortunately, technologies and extensive collaborative collection building with other UC libraries now provide us excellent options for rapidly delivering information to you when journals are not locally owned. The attached page provides some further background on the budget predicament we face, as well as a summary of the strategies that the Library has used to leverage funding.

In the week of April 27th, your librarian subject specialist will be sending you instructions on where to find and how to provide input on the preliminary lists of journals that we are asking you to review. In late May, before any cancellations are made, a second list of potential cancellations, based on faculty input, will be sent to you for final review and comment before the end of Spring Quarter.

The Library has created a serials review web site that contains more complete background information, an FAQ, a comprehensive list of journal subscriptions under review as well as a comprehensive list of electronic journals we purchase through CDL, information on alternative scholarly publishing options, and Library contacts if you have questions.

We appreciate your important input for this endeavor. Please do not hesitate to contact me (bjohnson@library.ucsb.edu) or Lucia Snowhill, Associate University Librarian for Collection Development, (snowhill@library.ucsb.edu) with questions and concerns. The Library is continually striving to improve services and access to research resources for you and your students. We always welcome your ideas in helping us to provide the highest quality of service to you. Thank you for your support.

With my personal thanks,
Brenda L. Johnson
University Librarian

CHALLENGES
Purchasing power for library collections has fallen approximately 25% over the last several years. Even a relatively stable and flat budget has resulted in decreased ability to purchase academic content. Several factors contribute to this loss:

• National surveys have indicated that inflation for journals has averaged 9-12% annually for the last several years, far exceeding consumer price increases. Each year, the cost of supporting journal subscriptions has eroded the Library’s ability to fund monographs and other scholarly materials.
• Inflation for monographs has also steadily increased in the last few years, ranging from about 3-5% per year, depending on the discipline.
• Online resources (databases) of content that were traditionally a one-time cost in print now normally become an ongoing subscription cost, aggravating the dominance of ongoing serials expenditures in the collections budget.
• Unfavorable foreign exchange rates have increased costs for foreign resources.
• Proliferation of new journal content has increased demand for acquiring new titles.

STRATEGIES
The Library has been using a number of strategies the last several years to mitigate inflationary impacts and to maximize access to journal content for you and your students. Our primary goal is to provide and preserve access to the broadest range of relevant unique content.

Commitment to participation in UC system-wide licensing of online journal content.
UCSB benefits greatly from the system-wide e-journal packages and other databases that are negotiated for all campuses through the UC California Digital Library (CDL) The prices and inflation rates are considerably lower than if we had a single campus online license, and normally we gain access to a number of journals and other content that we would not otherwise be able to afford. Benefits include:

• Access to a much larger number of journal titles
• Caps on journal inflation that help control budget
• Leverage the power of UC to influence publisher business models and cap inflation rates
• Maintenance of shared print copy for journals in major e-journal licenses

Reduce expenditures to the vast majority of duplicate print journals where reliable long-term access to the online versions is available through shared archival print copies at SRLF (UC Southern Regional Library Facility). UC obtains single print copies of journals provided in electronic format as back-up for electronic versions. UC negotiates for perpetual access to online content purchased.

UC librarians collaborate extensively system-wide in all academic disciplines to leverage funding both to ensure diversity of collections across the system and to share expertise to support faculty and student research needs. Increasingly, UC collaborates nationally with other major library organizations and academic libraries to build and preserve collections.

Capitalize on technological advancements to provide rapid delivery of content to you that is not in local collections through desktop ILL, mass digitization, and shared collection building across UC.

Join all UC libraries in strongly supporting a number of initiatives for alternative and transformative creation, preservation and communication of scholarly content in a search for more sustainable ways to ensure long term access and preservation of the scholarly record.

Continue to work aggressively with faculty to find sustainable models for creation, access and preservation of scholarly information through alternative publishing.