Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 22, 1995 TAG: 9506220043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
- Rising costs, tightening budgets and the trend toward computerized research are leading Virginia Tech to consider canceling up to 16 percent of its subscriptions to academic journals and other periodicals in its libraries.
The cost-cutting move is designed to save $500,000 annually. Tech could save up to $918,000 if all 2,600 publications under consideration are eliminated. The library hasn't decided where to apply the savings.
Whether many people will miss Advances in Strawberry Production, Scottish Forestry, African Communist or other endangered titles is up for debate. But the university community seems to agree that the proposed cut is another sign of tight times at Tech, combined with a national trend away from printed journals and toward more reliance on database research.
Users of Tech's libraries have until Friday to comment on the list of titles proposed for elimination, available at reference desks and via the Internet's World Wide Web (http://vatech.lib.vt.edu/). The final decision on the cuts should come by July 9.
The proposal concerns some faculty, who are sensitive to the effect budget cuts might have on the university's research mission. Library size and quality traditionally is one way to judge a university. It's also on the minds of librarians, who, since spring, have worked to prepare the list of cancellation candidates. It's the first major culling since 1991, when Tech saved $300,000 by eliminating more than 1,250 titles.
"I think there is a natural concern," said Eileen Hitchingham, dean of the libraries. "And, really, the challenge to libraries today is how do you meet that research mission in a changing ... funding environment."
The situation isn't as critical at neighboring Radford University's McConnel Library, which subscribes to 3,100 periodicals, compared with Virginia Tech's 16,000.
"Right now, we're not at the point where we feel a crunch," said Gerald Gordon, the library's coordinator of technical services. Radford spends a smaller portion of its budget on periodicals and other serials than would a large research institution such as Tech. Still, the university will be looking at its collection over the next two to three years. "We don't have any definite goals that we will be cutting a certain percentage," Gordon said.
Although Tech earlier this year asked all its departments to plan for budget cuts of 5 percent in the fiscal year beginning July 1, the libraries' proposed subscription cut also is a result of changes in the publishing industry.
The rise in periodical prices has far outstripped the inflation rate, to the point where Tech has seen a 15 percent annual cost increase. That has sent Tech and other research libraries looking for ways to cut costs, but provide the same or better access to materials through electronic means, Hitchingham said.
Academic journal articles, in particular, will be changed in coming years by the shift toward computer database searches, Hitchingham said.
Similarly, students will come to rely more on electronic searches. A report presented last week to members of the Association of American Publishers, for instance, concluded that the World Wide Web will become the "ultimate library of public information" over the next five years, growing from 5,000 sites to as many as 5 million by 2000, according to an account in this week's issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"The key issue for the university is to continue to have adequate access to information throughout the world," said Tom Sherman, president of the faculty senate. "The better access we have to information, the better job we can do of sharing information. The lifeblood of what we do is information."
by CNB