Hello Liv,
Your questions are certainly pertinent here at UVA. We've been discussing this issue for some time and I would also like to hear what other art and architecture libraries are thinking about this issue.
See below for a (very) little information on what we have been doing.

At 03:31 PM 9/16/2002 -0500, valmestad liv wrote:
Hello everyone,

Our Head Librarian, Mary Lochhead wondered if I could post the following questions on her behalf, and if there are any suggestions please post to the list or email Mary at:

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Has  there been any discussion on the ARLIS listserv about
cancelling print journals and keeping electronic?  Have librarians talked about strategies they used to keep print (e.g. convincing the people with the money).

We have a vocal community of users here and many of them prefer the print versions of journals to electronic primarily because of image quality.  I've done some investigation comparing print vs. electronic versions.  Basically, I've found that some publishers do not include images with their full text; the quality of the images varies considerably and one cannot assume that reliably usable images will accompany full text.

 Do they feel keeping print is more important than electronic.  Have they had feedback from users on having to use electronic?

Yes, we do get feedback regarding the few cases in which we've changed from print to electronic.  The complaint has consistently been the images - lack of quality.

Has anyone done a comparison of print and electronic "equivalents" to find out if they truly are equivalent.

I have not done a true comparison, but have investigated some full text vendors too if electronic really is equivalent.  Sometimes they are, sometimes not.  Project Muse is the closest to equivalent that we have seen here, but then we receive only one electronic journal in the arts via Project Muse.


If there hasn't been much discussion do you think it would be worth sending out a question to the list?  There seems to be a push to cancel print for electronic (as per the Collections Committee minutes) and I would like to show how other art/arch libraries have handled this issue.

As I said above, I would like to hear from others on this topic.  Thank you for bringing this up!
Ann Whiteside


thanks,

Liv 


Liv Valmestad, Reference Librarian (Information Detective)
Architecture/Fine Arts Library University of Manitoba TEL: 204 474 8447
FAX: 204 474 7539 [log in to unmask]

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Ann Whiteside Director, Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library Past President, Visual Resources Association Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library University of Virginia 434-924-6601 FAX: 434-982-2678 [log in to unmask] www.lib.virginia.edu/fine-arts www.vraweb.org