Lemieux Library will initiate a short-term project to de-accession and remove from its physical collection a portion of printed journal titles that are available in full-text digital format from the
Journal Storage Program (JSTOR) and from the
American Chemical Society (ACS). This opportunity is made possible by two related developments.
First, both JSTOR and ACS have established themselves as secure and reliable providers of digital content. Working with these vendors, we enable access to hundreds of electronic journals through effective and familiar interfaces from computers within the library, elsewhere on campus via the campus network, and from remote off-campus sites by means of the library’s proxy server.
Second, Lemieux Library is participating in the Orbis Cascade Alliance’s Distributed Print Repository Program. The 35 member institutions of this regional academic consortium will share responsibility to ensure that two print copies of each of the journals in the ACS collection and in JSTOR Arts and Sciences 1 & 2 are retained permanently in the region and that the content of these titles can be made available to the members and their students and faculty in the unlikely event that access to the digital versions is compromised. Lemieux Library is assuming the responsibility to retain permanently 26 journal titles, but will discard its other print journal holdings so that space can be re-assigned to other collections or services.
Alliance members are finalizing the Memorandum of Understanding that will govern the Distributed Print Repository Program. Lemieux Library staff will soon begin the de-accessioning and we anticipate completing the project during spring 2008. At its conclusion, the library will apply this experience to the de-accessioning of other portions of its print journal collection, both general multi-disciplinary collections like JSTOR Arts and Sciences 3 & 4 and specialized journal collections in individual disciplines. We anticipate that Lemieux’s Liaison Librarians will work with their Faculty Library Representatives to identify print titles that can be de-accessioned because of the reliable availability of their digital counterpart.
If you have questions or comments on these plans for the evolution of Lemieux Library’s print and digital collections, please contact Mary Linden Sepulveda, Coordinator of Collection Development, at 206-296-6209 or mlinden@seattleu.edu.
John Popko, University Librarian