Abstract
Many academic libraries evaluate their journal holdings with an emphasis on deselection rather than selection. Likewise, many consider each journal package or full-text database as a whole, through indicators such as cost per download, without explicitly accounting for the quality of the journals included in each package. Better results can be achieved through a two-stage process that first identifies the ‘wanted journals’ most important to the university’s teaching and research programs, then objectively determines the most cost-effective means of acquiring those journals. Our procedure combines an emphasis on the quality of individual journals with an iterative database/subscription selection method that minimizes costs and avoids any bias toward the journals initially held by the library. Although the process involves considerable effort, it can be used to increase the library’s holdings of wanted journals without increasing total expenditure, or to maintain the number of wanted journals while reducing total expenditure. Our results also demonstrate that title-by-title selection of journals is not inconsistent with acquisition through full-text databases.
Highlights
Journal selection, rather than deselection, was once a key topic within the library literature
The library initially held 1,404 of the 2,717 wanted journals identified by the Manhattan College faculty, and our analysis revealed that we could have acquired the same number of wanted journals for just 37% of our initial expenditure
At Manhattan College, we found it appropriate to select wanted journals by using a single criterion: whether each journal was identified by the faculty of an academic department or program as important to their teaching and research
Summary
Rather than deselection, was once a key topic within the library literature. Apart from cost, the factors most often considered in the literature of the past decade are local use (e.g. online downloads and views), the subjective ratings of faculty or other subject experts, the number of times university staff have cited or published in the journal, inclusion in major bibliographic databases, overall citation impact, availability through the collections of other libraries and use in interlibrary loan.[9]. At Manhattan College, we found it appropriate to select wanted journals by using a single criterion: whether each journal was identified by the faculty of an academic department or program as important to their teaching and research.
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