1. Why is $150,000-175,000 the target dollar amount?
We have been using a reserve fund to help pay for subscriptions, but that fund ran out in FY2015. $150-$175,000 will make up for the amount we used from that fund in FY2015, plus allow for an expected journal/database inflation rate of 6-7% for our remaining subscriptions.
2. How can I participate in the review?
We are eager to have faculty participate and encourage you to do so. There are two ways faculty can participate in the review. Your department will be providing feedback as a unit on the proposed cuts in its area. It is up to the department chair to decide how he or she wishes to gather this feedback. In addition, you may provide individual feedback through MyClasses (Blackboard version). In the course listing, look for "Journal/Database Review Project." You will find spreadsheets with the proposed cancellations and a link to an online survey where you can provide feedback.
We are asking faculty to respond individually through MyClasses by April 24. We are asking departments to send their departmental priority list to their librarian liaison by April 2
4. What is being considered for cancellation?
Databases and journals, both in print and electronic formats.
5. What factors are being considered in deciding on cancellations?
We are looking at usage, cost, availability by other means, and importance of the title to our curriculum. We are hoping to cancel only titles that have relatively little use and are not essential to the curriculum. We are looking for faculty guidance to tell us what is important or essential, such as titles required for program accreditation or that they use as the basis for class assignments.
6. When will the cancellations take effect?
Renewals are due to our publishers in early May. Many cancellations will take effect in July 2015, while some will not take effect until January 2016.
7. If a journal has been cancelled, how can I access articles from that journal?
In the case of print journals, we still will have the print copies from when we subscribed. In the case of electronic journals, depending on the licensing terms, in some cases, we will still have electronic access to the articles published while we subscribed, while in other cases, we will not.
For articles published after our subscription is cancelled or to which we no longer have subscriber access, you have two options:
a. Request articles through InterLibrary Loan (ILL). We have recently joined two additional services, Get It Now and RapidILL, to get articles to you as quickly as possible, often in fewer than 48 hours. The ILL website may be found at: http://www.salisbury.edu/library/ill/
b. If you found the reference to the article through the Libraries’ discovery tool (the search engine on the Libraries’ home page) and full-text is available, it will be linked. In the individual article result, click on “View Now” to see it. Many journal articles are included in aggregator databases, such as Academic Search Complete, Business Source Premier, or BioOne. In some cases, articles may not be available until 6 to 12 months after they are published.
8. I subscribe to a journal that the library is cancelling. Can I donate my copy to the library?
We appreciate your willingness to help us out, but no, we cannot accept personal copies. Library subscription rates are considerably higher than personal subscription rates for most journals, which is quite annoying to us, of course. But we have learned the hard way that accepting personal copies ends up being a very inconsistent way to acquire journals.
9. Is the library cutting other spending?
The library has reduced other non-personnel spending, including spending on books, considerably over the past few years, as journals and databases have taken an ever-bigger chunk of the library’s budget. We will cut some other spending, but, frankly, there’s just not much else left to cut.
10. Will cancelled journals be brought back?
If we end up getting a high number of requests for articles from a journal through Inter-Library Loan, then we would consider re-subscribing to that journal.
11. Whom should I contact for more information?
For discipline-specific information, contact the librarian liaison to your department. For general information about the review project, contact either Bea Hardy, Dean of Libraries, at bbhardy@salisbury.edu or Martha Zimmerman, Associate Dean and Head of Technical Services, at mczimmerman@salisbury.edu.