Dear colleagues,

As part of the Libraries' budget reduction for fy2010, the acquisitions budget will be cut by $375,000, a reduction of approximately 8%. In addition, we expect that the OhioLINK budget will be cut for fy2010, probably by an amount ranging from 5-10%. Because the OhioLINK budget helps to fund many of our electronic journals, books, and databases, this will also have a negative effect on our purchasing power next year.

We are therefore beginning a serials cancellation project for 2010, and we are asking for your help in identifying candidates for cancellation. If we have estimated that serials costs for your discipline will exceed the amount of funding available over the next 1-2 years, we have assigned your department/school a target amount for serial cancellations, and have notified your library representative and your director or department chair of the target.

We encourage all departments and schools to review the list of serials for your discipline. If you see titles that are no longer relevant to the work of your faculty and students - or that are not relevant enough at today's prices - please work through your library representative to nominate them for cancellation. The savings from cancelled titles will allow us to purchase more monographs in your discipline, or perhaps to substitute a new journal.

Procedure

Please contact your library representative to learn how cancellation nominations will be handled within your department or school. Serial titles for each discipline are posted at http://www.library.ohiou.edu/serials/, along with the specific cancellation target amount for the corresponding department/school. Once the titles have been posted, each department/school will have the opportunity to review titles and nominate cancellations through the end of spring term. In addition to titles and recent prices, the review lists include format, frequency, publisher, and other information that may be helpful. Links to usage statistics for electronic journals and to alternative sources of full-text articles will also be available at http://www.library.ohiou.edu/serials/. Subject librarians will be ready to answer questions and provide assistance at your request.

The cancellation list will be posted to this web page and updated as responses are received. The list will be available throughout the summer and early fall. During this time, a title nominated for cancellation by one department may be picked up by another department, providing the second department has sufficient funds available to pay for the title or is willing to cancel another title to free up sufficient funds. Thus it is possible that there will be some changes to the list over the summer, although we expect that this will be the exception rather than the norm.

Please let me know if you have questions or concerns about this project, your cancellation target, acquisitions funds available for your discipline, or anything else related to this project. Thank you very much.

Jan Maxwell

Assistant Dean, Collections & Access

University Libraries