FY03 Serials Review

General Information

Regular review of continuing purchasing commitments is part of responsible collection management. Recognizing this responsibility librarians regularly review subscriptions for journals and electronic resources as well as standing orders. The Libraries have initiated a regular triennial collection-wide review of journals, last carried out in FY01. Normally this review would be repeated in FY04. In light of the budget pressures currently affecting the University of Maryland and the reasonable expectation that these could increase, the Libraries need to gather data to provide a clearer picture about how serial commitments are serving the campus community.

This year's review will include print subscriptions (i.e. journals) along with electronic resource subscriptions (databases, e-journals, etc.) and standing orders for series. The review will be comprehensive and will require prioritization of current commitments. Because of the broad implications of this prioritization process, faculty are encouraged to work with the Libraries in this process. The broad outlines of the process are laid out in the documents below. The majority of the work, particularly that involving faculty outside the Libraries will occur during the 02/03 academic year. Following an initial period of data gathering and organizing within the Libraries, librarians will be approaching their liaison departments late in the Fall to consult about prioritization. All faculty will have an opportunity to be involved at this stage. The final prioritization will need to be completed by the Spring of 2003 to ensure that the results of the review can be used to manage collections in FY04.

Supporting Resources

Frequently Asked Questions

2003 Serials Review Selectors Directory

Building the General Collections

FY03 Serials Review Process

Timeline for FY03 Serial Review

Three tiered prioritization of targeted serial titles

Evaluation Criteria For FY03 Serial Review

Spreadsheet listing current journal subscriptions (Excel,updated March 6, 2003)

Spreadsheet listing current standing orders (Excel,updated March 6, 2003)

Spreadsheet listing current electronic resource subscriptions (Excel, updated September 24, 2002)

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Tools to assist in evaluating subscriptions:

Journals which inflated rapidly from 2002 to 2003 (Excel)

Database usage statistics from FY01 (Excel)

E-journal Usage Statistics

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Journal titles included in UnCover

Ingenta/UnCover FAQ's

Journal Citation Reports

Policy on Collecting only Electronic Versions of Journals (2002)

List of publishers known to offer savings for conversion of print subscriptions to electronic-only (Excel)

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Other resources:

Cheat sheet for searching the serials mode in CARL

Web pages from FY01 journal review

Electronic Publications

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