NASIG Newsletter

STRATEGY SESSION

The Changing Landscape of Serials: Open Access Journals in the Public Catalog

Nancy Newsome, Head of Collection Development & Serials; and Krista Schmidt, Reference Librarian, both from Western Carolina University
Reported by Paula Webb 

Nancy Newsome began the discussion by explaining the possibility of alleviating the budget crunch by using the components of open access. “The serials crisis has been going on for thirty years or more. Libraries have a difficult time managing the serials budget without compromising other collections they have. In the year 2000, Hunter Library [at Western Carolina University] cut over 20% of their print titles.” “What we do or [do] not do in the future will depend on the direction of scholarly communication. When the embargoed journals become open access, there will still not be any relief. It is hard to say how this will affect our budgets. Currently, the existence of open access has not affected our budget, but it has made our holdings more robust.”   Krista Schmidt then talked about making serials holdings more robust. “When it comes to adding open access journals to the catalog, we thought about how it could include classes that we might find more important to spend the money on. We can pick and choose the most relevant titles needed.”  “How many of us are taking advantage of tracking open access journals? As for our library, we include individual recommendations, but we are not as proactive as we should be. There is a lack of communication between the librarian and the vendor. This makes it harder for librarians to find the free open access journals. We have to become more proactive in what our vendors are providing us.” 

Schmidt pointed out that another problem for many people is quality. “One way to verify a quality online journal is creating screening criteria. As for Hunter Library, they already have selection criteria that all open access journals have to meet. The selection criteria are based only on the journals they add individually.” Krista Schmidt and Nancy Newsome advised the use of LC subject headings when adding open access journals in the catalog. “Serials have always been problematic for LC in that the serial’s title should be as specific as possible. Perhaps a 690 field can be used or a genre field.”  Newsome then discussed maintaining open access serials, “The problem is that you do not have a relationship with the vendor and there is less incentive for them to tell us about changes. For assistance in keeping track of open access journals, librarians could use link checkers or you could use a service such as Serial Solutions or EBSCO’s A-Z list. However, they are always going to require some maintenance.”  In conclusion, Nancy Newsome and Krista Schmidt successfully examined both collection development and technical issues related to open access journals.