Electronic Journal Subscriptions and Off-Site Shelving
The number of the Libraries’ subscriptions to electronic journals has grown considerably in recent years. Our subscriptions enable us to provide electronic access to both current and historical journal literature from more than 3,000 titles. The electronic format permits desk-top access around the clock to an unlimited number of simultaneous UM users and offers researchers full-text searching, many shortcuts to note-taking and record-keeping, as well as other added features unique to the electronic presentation of content.The Libraries have developed criteria to evaluate publishers who offer “electronic only” options. When publishers meet our criteria, the Libraries have opted for subscriptions to the electronic version only, foregoing print in order to meet user preferences as well as to alleviate the strain on crowded shelves and to redirect the staff time and materials funds expended in the processing and maintenance of our print serial collections to other collection and service needs.
The Libraries subscribe to more than 1500 journals in electronic only format. Another 1500+ of our subscriptions are to print and electronic editions. We subscribe to both formats in cases in which publishers do not offer an e-only option or in which publishers do not meet our criteria for moving e-only.
The Libraries have examined use of our print and electronic collections and have both reviewed and conducted studies regarding researchers’ choices when electronic and print formats are both available. The Libraries have been collecting data on the use of our print journals since the fall of 2004. Use of electronic journals has been available from the publishers for varying numbers of years. Given these findings, in conjunction with limited space available on campus to house lower-use materials, the Libraries will begin sending print copies of journals to which we also subscribe or own electronic editions to the Maryland Off-Site Shelving facility (MOSS).
Materials in MOSS will continue to be listed in the Catalog and will be available for delivery to campus within two business days should the electronic edition not suffice.
If, in the future, the Libraries opted to cancel a subscription to an e-only title we would continue to have online access to the content years during which we subscribed. Consequently, electronic access to back issues would be maintained, and there would be no need to bring the paper copies back to campus.
The first serial runs to be sent to MOSS will be those titles available through the Libraries’ subscription to and archival purchase of journals in JSTOR. JSTOR offers full-text searchable, high quality images of more than 500 core journals in a number of disciplines. JSTOR covers journals from volume 1, issue 1 through issues from 4-6 years ago. The American Mathematical Monthly, for example, is full text in JSTOR from 1894 through 2001. We would send to MOSS only those volumes that are available through JSTOR. In this example, print copies of the American Mathematical Monthly from 2002 to the present, content not currently covered in JSTOR, would remain on campus.
In a number of instances, journals available in JSTOR are from publishers who make their current issues available in Project Muse. The Libraries subscribe to Project Muse, a vendor that also meets our e-only criteria. So in these cases we would send everything to MOSS that is also accessible online. Therefore, the entire run of Shakespeare Quarterly, for example, which is in JSTOR from 1950 to 2000 and in Project Muse from 2001 to 2004 would be sent to MOSS. (2004 is the year we became electronic only for this journal. Current issues are available only online.)
The need to mitigate space pressures will dictate which titles are transferred first and from which campus libraries.
Beyond JSTOR and Project Muse, the Libraries will use equivalent electronic access as a criterion for identifying print serials for MOSS. The Libraries will expand this initiative to include other electronic journal collections and publishers as our space needs warrant and as use statistics substantiate.
