VII. Directions in Information Resources

 Published December 1, 2004

• Current Environment
• Planning Issues
• Five-Year Objectives

The Current Environment

Through a subject-based liaison model, librarians have built a solid print book collection. We are in the midst of a move to an approval plan that we hope will streamline the selection process. We have added several collections of ebooks but generally see them as supplements rather than substitutes for the print book collection.

We continue to feel our way in the complex world of electronic resources. We currently provide an excellent array of reference tools (indexes, abstracts) in electronic form, with a major tool for virtually every discipline we serve. We have added several major electronic journal collections, including Project Muse, JSTOR as well as a number of publisher-based collections. While we have done some canceling of duplicated content, our greatest success in choosing online over print has been in the Sciences. We have an online public-access catalog (OPAC) of over 2,500,000 high-quality bibliographic records
reflecting all material formats. It is the primary vehicle for determining what resources the Mount Holyoke community has access to. Further Mount Holyoke shares this library catalog system with the other members of Five Colleges, thus providing a unified catalog of the holding of all these institutions.

For the logistical matters related to the acquisition of electronic resources, we have moved away from reliance on Five Colleges, which oddly was both too large and too small to be effective, and have aligned ourselves with several regional and national consortia that are able to negotiate more favorable pricing as well as more reasonable licensing terms.

The transfer of 20,000 periodical volumes to the Five College Depository has provided ample room in that area of the library stacks for growth. Today our greatest space pressures are in the Williston book stack areas, due mainly to the closing of the Art Library and the subsequent transfer of 40,000 volumes to Williston.

Planning Issues

The greatest demand and the greatest complexity surround the acquisition of electronic journals. The complexities are both external, as publishers refine pricing and access models and internal, as faculty come to terms with a shifting landscape. Some faculty members have been understandably reluctant to embrace a move to electronic journals when it is still, for them, an abstract concept. Once they have first-hand experience, however, many faculty are pleased with the powerful features of the electronic format and welcome increased availability. That acceptance, however, does not necessarily lead to a willingness to drop print subscriptions. We cannot sustain dual collections and provide the community with the resources they expect for very much longer. We have begun to ask hard questions and to challenge our own assumptions about what is necessary. Our next step will be to more fully engage the faculty in those questions. Specifically we will need their help to determine what must be in print on campus, what can and should be available electronically, and what can be obtained through ILL/Document delivery on an “as needed “basis. The answers to these questions will vary by discipline, perhaps even by faculty member

In Fall 2003 LITS established an account with Ingenta, a document delivery service. Faculty members are able to order articles directly without library staff intervention. We will monitor closely the response to this service and hope that it may be expanded. We recognize that we can no longer sustain double-digit increases in journal prices and look for alternatives to ownership as a way to provide more content options within the existing budget.

Five-Year Objectives

The three primary objectives for information resources are to:

• Maintain resources at the current level – strive to provide more content with the same budget by reducing duplication and obtaining lesser-used materials on demand.
• Move from print to electronic resources for periodicals and data as budgets allow and use-patterns evolve.
• Manage space needs for the library materials through weeding and transfer of lesser-used materials to the Five College Library Depository.