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

 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

Wyndham Robertson Libraryand campus ROANOKE, VA

 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…

 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?

 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

 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

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

 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

 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

Attractive receptacle for used periodicals

Thanks, Rebecca! DRAMATICREENACTMENT!

 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

 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

 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?

 Once department liaisons made their lists of potential cancellations and journals they planned to keep, they ed 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

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

 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

 $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

 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

 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

Susan Vandale Cataloging & Periodicals Librarian Hollins University – Wyndham Robertson Library Thank you for attending! QUESTIONS?