The table below updates figures shared with faculty in the annual Report on the Collections, sponsored by LITS Advisory. As the footnotes in the collection size section indicate, we have made some revisions in our counting methods. Likewise, we have made some adjustments within the budget allocations to better reflect our spending activity.

¹Although we added over 13,000 volumes in 2000/01, this total reflects the subtraction of archival materials previously included in the print collection count.
2. Now reported in volumes instead of titles.
³Total does not include volumes withdrawn to the Depository.

Depository

After several years of planning and discussion with faculty, the Five College Library Depository opened in Fall 2002. In January 2003, Mount Holyoke began its transfer of materials with backfiles of journals duplicated in JSTOR. In addition we transferred backfiles of selected periodicals in Philosophy, Physics and Library Science.

Titles sent to depository: 342

Vols. sent to depository: 11,399 + 2880 fiche

Liaisons also worked with faculty in Economics, History, Psychology and Spanish to develop lists of periodicals and serials to be transferred. Those transfers began this summer and will continue in the fall.

In an effort to expand the types of materials we offer to the community we added two rental collections to the Library Court. We rent popular print books from McNaughton, and books-on-tape from Landmark Audio. After setting up a “core collection” we add new titles throughout the year. These collections circulate to members of the MHC community.

Electronic resources

Again this year we increased our offerings of electronic resources. We were able to move from print to online subscriptions for the following indexing tools

In addition, we began subscriptions to:

Over the past few years we have participated in consortial purchases with the other libraries in the Five Colleges. Most recently we were able to negotiate a discount to Academic Search Premier. While there has been a benefit in sharing information, hosting vendor demonstrations, and typically better pricing, we have all concluded that purchasing electronic resources is better done in larger national or regional consortia that have more clout in negotiating prices and license terms. We have been members of Nelinet and Obegroup and affiliates of NERL (New England Research Libraries). This year we also joined the WALDO consortium and have already availed ourselves of two of their offers.

In late December, we began to hear rumors that the parent company of Faxon, our main periodical vendor, was experiencing major financial difficulties and was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. The worst case would be that the vendor had accepted our payment in the fall, but had not then paid the hundreds of publishers with whom we have subscriptions to journals. We did not know what journals we would receive when the subscription year turned over in January. The staff in SAS spent many weeks creating lists and calling publishers to determine who had been paid and whether we could expect our subscriptions to continue in 2003. Liaisons met with faculty to identify titles for which a gap in holdings would be unacceptable. By late spring, the picture began to get clearer. The majority of our subscriptions would continue, either because the payment had gone through or because the publisher had graced our subscription for the year.

In consultation with faculty, liaisons identified approximately 38 titles we needed to order again to assure there would be no gap in our holdings. A small number of remaining titles would probably not arrive but we decided to leave the gap for 2003.

When Ebsco, another periodical vendor, bought Faxon we decided to accept their terms. We hope for a less eventful year with this new arrangement.

Periodical review and budget reduction

With changes in the College’s curriculum as well as evolving developments in publishing it is important to review the Library’s journal holdings on a regular basis to be sure the collection continues to meet the needs of students and faculty. This past fall, we began to plan a review employing a new model suggested by members of LITS Advisory. Rather than a comprehensive review of all departments, we planned to select several departments for an in-depth review of their needs and the Library’s offerings. As we were about to begin that process, we received news that we would experience a 5% cut in the materials budget for fiscal year 2003/04. That news, coupled with the Faxon crisis (above) led us to postpone the planned review and focus instead on the budget cut. At the suggestion of LITS Advisory, we concentrated our review on duplicate content and expensive titles. For the duplicated titles, we looked at journals available electronically in Project Muse, BioOne, History Cooperative and also those titles included as full-text in Academic Search Premier. We defined titles as “expensive” if the annual subscription cost was above $1000. After much consultation with faculty, we canceled 15 “expensive” titles, saving almost $47,000. In addition, we canceled 84 duplicated titles for a savings of over $13,000; the great majority of these titles were available electronically in Project Muse. We discovered that the full-text offerings in Academic Search Premiere duplicated our print holdings less than we originally thought. While this was disappointing from the budget-saving perspective, it means that by adding Academic Search Premiere, we acquired even more new content than we originally expected.

Beginning this fall, we will revive our plan to review the Library’s journal collections several departments at a time. Over the course of the next few years, we should be able to work with all departments to review the periodicals in each discipline.

Submitted by Kathleen Norton
August 2003