1. Susan Vandale Hollins University NC Serials Conference March 14, 2014 IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT BUDGET CUTS A STUDY OF PRINT PERIODICAL USAGE AND A SUBSEQUENT CANCELLATION PROJECT AT A SMALL ACADEMIC LIBRARY

2.  Hollins University is a 4-year, private, liberal arts institution committed to the education of women  Ranked among Forbes’ 100 most financially fit colleges in the U.S.  Featured on The Princeton Review’s 378 Best Colleges list  Wyndham Robertson Library is Virginia’s first National Literary Landmark  WRL was honored with an ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award in 2009 A LITTLE BIT ABOUT HOLLINS & WRL

3. Wyndham Robertson Libraryand campus ROANOKE, VA

4.  Enrollment down  Less money coming in to the University  A flat 2013/2014 budget for the library  Flat budgets in libraries are essentially budget cuts  Journal inflation  Database subscription increases  Also, our gorgeous library has space issues! THE BAD NEWS…

5.  Not the first budget cut in recent years  Serials budget had been protected in previous years because of staff changes; book budget had been reduced  Undesirable to slash the book budget again  Serials had to take the hit HOW DO WE COPE?

6.  Users like the convenience of online resources  Ability to read in their own space, be it dorm room, office or home  Ability to access resources on their own time  No digging through back volumes in the basement, or, worse, using microfilm (The horror!) Online resources often allow us to serve our users more effectively than print. WHAT WE KNEW

7.  How often print periodicals were used  Periodicals are housed in a room that many of our patrons use for study and group projects  We count use, but our patrons are a polite, helpful bunch and often reshelve the serials they use; there was no way our count use stats were accurate  What value our faculty placed on print titles and how they would receive news of cancellations WHAT WE DID NOT KNOW

8. Now with 33% more pictures! The Great WRL Print Periodicals Study of 2013

9.  We have always asked patrons not to reshelve magazines, but our signage was small and in places they wouldn’t necessarily look  So… KISS  Create bigger signage and a better receptacle for returned journals and newspapers  Put both somewhere obvious  Count use frequently and reshelve THE PRINT PERIODICALS STUDY

10.  Informative but brief signage  Large, attractive receptacle for used periodicals  Staff dedicated to counting use and reshelving  Downloaded count use stats from Millennium before and after the study – math! HOW WE DID IT

12. Attractive receptacle for used periodicals

13. Thanks, Rebecca! DRAMATICREENACTMENT!

14.  What we suspected, unfortunately – print periodical usage is low  Our patrons still like reading newspapers in print  Titles with the highest usage were poetry/fiction/literary journals whose content is often not readily accessible online WHAT WE LEARNED

15.  Email from the University Librarian to all faculty  Department liaisons followed up with their own faculty members  The reaction? Everything went better than expected! BREAKING THE NEWS TO THE FACULTY

16.  Enter the Spreadsheet of Extraordinary Usefulness  Cataloging & Periodicals Librarian downloaded a list of all subscriptions from Ebsconet and divided by academic division for all liaisons  Online coverage, coverage if title cancelled, usage stats for all time and for spring semester only, etc  Cataloging & Periodicals Librarian gathered the data, cancellation decisions left to liaison librarians and their departments WHAT DO WE CUT? WHAT DO WE KEEP?

19.  Once department liaisons made their lists of potential cancellations and journals they planned to keep, they emailed those lists to their faculty with a request for feedback: What do you want to keep? Anything you would cancel?  If faculty had any objections to a cancellation, it was taken off the list without question or argument. (Luckily, there were very few objections!)  Individual meetings held for cancellations versus potential new subscriptions/resources WHAT TO CUT, WHAT TO KEEP PART TWO

20. There are other people who need to know your value: your users and yourselves REDEFINING VALUE – AND NOT JUST TO THE ADMINISTRATION

21.  The bottom line: $40,000, nearly a third of our serials budget from the previous fiscal year  We met our budget goal, and that makes administration happy  Less duplicate coverage=money better spent  Space: less journals going to the compact shelving means that we will have more time before we need to weed aggressively, and that reduces costs in staff time WHAT WE SAVED

22.  $40,000 was more than we needed to cut  Most from the social sciences; those journals have good online coverage  It was a long process, but look what we were able to do with part of that money…  Resources added:  Ebsco Academic e-books subscription (~100,000 e-books)  Two new journal packages in JSTOR  An electronic big deal with Springer for 1,000 journals in exchange for the cost of our 12 print subscriptions  New database: LGBT Life from Ebsco  New print subscriptions in the arts and literature  Hollins Digital Commons WHAT WE ADDED

23.  Flexibility in our budget  This wasn’t just about making cuts; we were able to add new resources  Peace of mind  Less duplicate coverage  We’re serving our users more effectively with the small budget that we have  Space  Reading room redesign coming this Spring! WHAT WE GAINED

24.  Budget cuts are what you make of them  Libraries are not simply a list of books and journals  Resources that are not used are not a good value in a small library  We had to cut some journals – instead of the bare minimum, we took a closer look  What can go?  What would we rather have instead?  How can we best serve our users? PARTING THOUGHTS

25. Susan Vandale Cataloging & Periodicals Librarian Hollins University – Wyndham Robertson Library vandalesa@hollins.eduvandalesa@hollins.edu, 540-362-6234 Thank you for attending! QUESTIONS?