This
past Spring, Cleveland State had to prepare for a possible major journal cut --
I had to review full-text art electronic journals that were available through
Ingenta, JSTOR, Periodical Abstracts, InfoTrac, Humanities Abstracts,
Lexis-Nexis, and Education Abstracts for Art education -- in most cases the
electronic digital image was NOT great or it was in black and white -- there
were a few journal titles I recommended for possible cut not because of the
availability of the digital image but based on LOW USE
The
CSU library had previously kept USE STATISTICS to validate possible journal cuts
-- I also pointed out the our Head of Collection Development that I was also
concerned about the electronic image quality and was only going to propose the
LOW USE titles that were available online or available through Interlibrary loan
to be the first titles that would be cut -- your USE statistics would be your
first step to consider a journal cut if faced with the situation -- luckily, the
Provost came up with some money this year to avoid a journal cut -- but we still
have to plan for next year -- hopefully the technology will
improve
Pam
Eyerdam, Art Librarian and Head of Reference at Cleveland State University
Library
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:
[log in to unmask]
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]
__________________________________________________________________ Mail
submissions to [log in to unmask] For information about joining ARLIS/NA
see:
http://www.arlisna.org//membership.html
Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html Questions may be addressed to list owner (Kerri Scannell) at: [log in to unmask]
<br>
</blockquote></x-html>
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