College and Research Libraries Cooperation, Collection Management, and Scientific Journals Elizabeth P. Roberts Libraries have found it necessary to cooperate in their cancellation and retention policies in order to maximize the number of scientific journals available within a region. This article de- scribes several existing cooperative serials purchase and deselection agreements, focusing on a recently instituted plan between two land grant libraries. ashington State University (WSU) and the University of Idaho (UI) were founded as land grant universities in 1890 and 1889. They are located eight miles apart in the middle of a rich agricultural area known as the Palouse. Combined, these libraries constitute the largest collec- tion of books and journals between Van- couver to the north, Salt Lake City to the south, Minneapolis to the east, and Seat- tle to the west-an area of over one million square miles. WSU has approximately 16,500 students and a library budget close to $6 million; UI has about 9,000 students and a library budget of $2.5 million. While informal cooperation between the UI and WSU libraries has existed for years, the two institutions had never for- malized a method of assigning responsi- bility for retaining journal subscriptions until the spring of 1986. Similar institu- tional goals have led to a significant over- lap in their library needs. This very simi- larity, _ however, presents opportunities for cooperation. In the selection and deselection of scien- tific journals, the two universities have found a simple method of cooperation that promises to significantly increase the number of titles available to the research community of the area and to save money in the process. COOPERATIVE OPPORTUNITIES FOR LIBRARIES Cooperation between libraries is in vogue, but many elaborate plans have borne little result. There are, however, possibilities for effective cooperation. As Michael Gorman states in his 1986 article, ''Laying Siege to the 'Fortress Library' '': Two kinds of cooperative endeavor have arisen in most libraries. The first I would call'' painless cooperation'' in which the amount of time and effort devoted is small and the benefits com- mensurately unimportant. Such cooperation can be found in joint acquisitions schemes that concentrate on the likes of Norwegian periodi- cals. [An example of] ... the other type is the OCLC shared cataloging program. 1 One area that cries out for cooperation is the acquisition and cancellation of scien- tific journals. The number of scientific journals has increased by a factor of ten every fifty years and has doubled every fif- teen years. 2 Meanwhile, prices have sky- rocketed. Science librarians are all too fa- miliar with the phenomenon of chemistry and -physics journals, which from 1977 to Elizabeth P. Roberts is Head, Owen Science and Engineering Library, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-3200. 247 248 College & Research Libraries 1985 rose 144.1 percent to an average price of $228.903 The only consolation for sci- ence librarians is the news that the rate of increase in the cost of science journals was surpassed only by labor and industrial re- lations journals, whose inflation rate of 165.1 percent represented an average price increase from $11.24 to $29.87. 3 One of the most alarming statistics is from John McCredie, who points out that books and journals in scientific fields have increased in price faster than the overall cost of living. If the percentage of the uni- versity budget dedicated to library costs increased fast enough to maintain a con- stant level of library acquisitions, the li- brary budget would consume 5.2 percent of the total university budget after ten years; 9 percent after twenty years, and 27 percent after forty years. Science librarians are familiar with the adage that 80 percent of a library's circula- . tion results from 20 percent of its collec- tion. 5 Applied to scientific journals, this means that to serve users adequately a li- brary must subscribe to the heavily used titles, butit can also· enter into cooperative agreements regarding the retention and cancellation of less-used and expensive ti- tles. Criteria and techniques for journal can- cellation projects are well documented. 6 According to Herbert S. White, when faced with skyrocketing journal prices during the 1970s, academic libraries froze the periodicals budget and drastically re- duced the number of new orders, can- celled duplicate subscriptions, and can- celled foreign titles. And what did they not do? They did not cancel based on avail- ability of journals at other institutions, nor did they cancel because of price. White predicted in 1981 that future can- cellations would be of single subscriptions (unique titles), not duplicate titles, and that librarians, not clientele, must choose them; that librarians must begin to distin- guish between those titles that should be immediately accessible in the library and those titles that can be made available on demand within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Stephen J. Bensman maintains that we must begin to identify seldom-used parts of the collection. In academic journal col- May1987 lections we can no longer aim at compre- hensiveness; we must shift our effort to II developing and maintaining a relatively small, multi-disciplinary core of heavily used titles that rank high in the formation and social system of scholarship.' ' 3 Once the less-used titles in a journal collection have been identified, the stage is set for area libraries to join together to maximize resources available to researchers. COOPERATIVE SERIALS AGREEMENTS A number of cooperative ventures have proved successful, and several others are in the planning stage. 8 Notable among the existing arrangements are the following. Pittsburgh Regional Library Center This center includes the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, Carnegie-Mellon University, and Carne- gie Library of Pittsburgh. OCLC serves as the communications vehicle for informing cooperating libraries when one library de- cides to cancel a title. The agreement reached with OCLC is to record the can- cellation decisions as a note in the hold- ings field. The reporting process consists of two steps-first, when an institution decides to cancel a title and again when is- sues are no longer received and the hold- ings are closed. For reasons of quality con- trol and monitoring, inputting was done centrally at the Pittsburgh Regional Li- brary.9 Holder of Record Each of six Veteran's Administration medical center libraries in California and Nevada has responsibility for certain titles in a pre-existing union list. The holder of record maintains these subscriptions, fills in gaps, and acts as an interlibrary loan source. This agreement was signed by the head librarians to assure compliance. A union list indicating responsible li- braries and holdings is available to all par- ticipants. Representatives of the libraries meet annually to consider reassigning title responsibilities, to review interlibrary bor- rowing records, and to make decisions on new titles. This project reduced space require- ments and subscription costs and in- Cooperation, Collection Management, and Scientific Journals 249 creased the number of collective titles from 609 in 1976 to 818 in 1980. 10 Inter-University Council of North Texas Area This plan, which involved fifteen aca- demic libraries, coordinates the cancel- lation of expensive duplicate titles and the cooperative acquisition of new titles. The libraries were already linked by a courier service. The feasibility of establishing a co- operative library center (physically sepa- rated from any existing library) was ex- plored and rejected because of cost. Each member library is assessed 1 percent of its total materials budget, to be used for a co- ordinator's salary, office communications costs, the acquisition of journals not previ- ously held in the area, and, if necessary, the subsidizing of existing subscriptions. Holding libraries send copies of tables of contents to the other cooperating libraries. Journals are not selected centrally, but in- stead are chosen by individual institutions according to local needs. Funds are avail- able in direct proportion to the institu- tional contribution to the cooperative jour- nal program. This project resulted in the cancellation of 662 duplicate titles with a net gain of $86,885 after deducting $38,276 in overhead costs. Of 212 new journals co- operatively purchased, 183 were new to the region. Work has begun on an OCLC- based union list of serials. 11 NEOMAL NEOMAL (Northeastern Ohio Major Academic Libraries) developed a cost- effective shared cancellation program. The first step was a study of journal use to identify candidates for cancellation. In- stead of developing a union list, members exchanged individual serials lists. Each li- brary notifies all other members whenever it wants to cancel a title. Within 48 hours cooperating libraries wire their approval or disapproval. If a cancellation is not unanimously approved, the question is discussed until a unanimous decision is reached. A machine-readable listing of co- operative decisions is collected on the Uni- versity of Akron's computer system, and bimonthly cumulative reports are pro- duced.u Miami (Ohio) Valley Association of Health Sciences Libraries In order to provide in-depth resources to the Miami, Ohio, area each library (8 hospitals, 2 small research organizations, a school of allied health, and a recently chartered school of medicine) pledged to collect both monographs and serials in a particular subtect area, using the Brandon list as a basis. 1 Each library attempts to ac- quire a ten-year back file in its assigned subjects. An existing union list provides bibliographic control. If a library wants to cancel a title that is considered important for the region, another library will pick it up. Annually, ILL borrowing from out- side the region is examined; if there are four or more requests for a journal not available locally, one of the libraries vol- unteers to subscribe. 14 SCRML By examining TALON, a union list of the area, the eleven resource libraries of the SCRML (South Central Regional Med- ical Library) are able to determine the ex- tent of subscription overlap. Representa- tives of each library bring lists of seldom-used journals to a meeting. Deci- sions on cancellations are made and one resource library in the region commits it- self to retaining the subscription and the back file. Back runs from other participat- ing libraries are transferred to that institu- tion. A list of important serial titles not in the region is generated, and libraries that cancelled other journals are encouraged to add these new titles, thereby increasing the number of journals available locally. Any library agreeing to subscribe to one of these has first option on any back files available. As a result of this project, 306 periodical subscriptions were dropped. 15 WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO: A HISTORY OF COOPERATION The cooperation between WSU and UI libraries has been typical of the ''painless'' variety. For example, UI has colleges in forestry and mining, and WSU does not. This has meant that librarians at WSU saw . no reason to collect esoteric journals in for- estry and mining. WSU has a larger mate- 250 College & Research Libraries rials budget than does UI, so if the former subscribed to an expensive index or jour- nal, ur librarians were able to assure their faculty that the title was accessible nearby. Other types of both formal and informal cooperation between the two library sys- tems take place routinely, for example: re- ciprocal borrowing privileges, an occa- sional joint purchase of a large and expensive microform collection, relying on a Chinese-speaking librarian from one library to address Chinese visitors at the other, exchanging memos and publica- tions, sharing expenses for visiting speak- ers, a daily delivery service for books and photocopies, staggering the binding of science serials, and sharing COM catalogs and serials lists. The most ambitious coop- erative project so far is a union list of seri- als produced in 1963. This union list, while helpful for many years, is of little use today because budgetary restrictions have prevented its updating. DESCRIPTION OF THE COOPERATIVE SERIALS PROJECT In the past, when either of the two li- brary systems was considering cancelling a journal, one consideration was whether the other subscribed to the same title. But without a formal agreement, there was no assurance that the other library would not cancel the journal. To eliminate this weak- ness and to regularize the cooperative as- pects of the process, the science libraries of the two universities have recently con- cluded a joint journal retention/cancel- lation agreement policy. The policy is de- signed to prevent erosion of the area's journal resources by insuring that the last copy of a journal subscription will not be cancelled without the concurrence of staff at both libraries: When both institutions hold a science journal being considered for cancellation by one or both of them, the science librarians jointly decide which library should cancel and which should re- tain the title. The retaining library agrees not to cancel the title without prior consul- tation. Although the present agreement specif- ically treats only cancellation decisions, consultation on the purchase of both seri- als and expensive monographs and the May 1987 possibility of joint ownership are envi- sioned. It can thus serve as a basis for ex- panding cooperation. Three things are essential to insure the success of a cooperative program: full trust and cooperation between the institu- tions involved, an effective and rapid method of delivering library material from one institution to the other, and easy ac- cess to holdings information. WSU and UI have a long history of institutional cooper- ation. They are also fortunate to have an excellent delivery system. If an item held by one library is requested by the other be- fore 11 a.m., it will normally be delivered by 7 p.m. the same day. Holdings infor- mation is available through serials lists and computer access to holdings files. When in doubt, library staff or users can telephone the sister institution for confir- mation. ANTICIPATED RESULTS OF THE PROGRAM Through this agreement, we expect to increase the total number of unique scien- tific journal titles in the area. This will be accomplished by redirecting our materials budgets away from duplicates and less- used journals and toward the unique titles heretofore not held in the area. Thus, by cancelling duplicate titles, the addition of new titles without a corresponding in- crease in our materials budgets has been possible. Since this cooperative scheme is based on a binding agreement between the two institutions, it eliminates the risk of unilateral decisions by one library that would damage the other. Both institutions are committed to main- taining daily courier service between li- braries. By exchanging tables of contents and displaying them among the journals currently received, we are assuring that patrons know what is accessible at the other library, and the delivery service as- sures that those articles are available within twenty-four hours. This is almost as good as being on site. Rather than being viewed as two com- peting institutions, the libraries are being thought of as one extended system. Thus, there is everything to gain and nothing to lose. .. • Cooperation, Collection Management, and Scientific Journals 251 CONCLUSION Libraries, as they cancel unique titles, have finally reached a point the publishers have dreaded. Local availability must re- place local ownership-not a new idea, but one that has finally come of age. By signing journal retention agree- ments, institutions with similar missions, located in close proximity and with rapid and reliable delivery systems, can signifi- cantly increase the number of less-used re- search journals available to faculty and students in the area. Such an agreement assures both institutions that a title will be available when it is needed. REFERENCES 1. Michael Gorman, "Laying Siege to the 'Fortress Library,"' American Libraries 17:325-28 (May 1986). 2. Derek de Solla Price, Science Since Babylon, enl. ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Pr., 1975), p.164-69. 3. Stephen J. Bensman, ''Journal Collection Management as a Cumulative Advantage Process,'' Col- lege & Research Libaries 46:13-29 Gan. 1985). 4. John W. McCredie, "Computer Acquisition: The Carnegie-Mellon Strategy," EDUCOM Bulletin 14:10-14 (Fall1979). 5. Richard L. Trueswell, ''Some Behavioral Patterns of Library Users: The 80/20 Rule,'' Wilson Library Bulletin 43:458-61 Gan. 1969). 6. John B. Wood and Lynn M. Cappel, "Drowning Our Kittens: Deselection of Periodicals in Aca- demic Libraries," Serials Librarian 3:317-31 (Spring 1979); Marilyn Williamson, "Seven Years of Cancellations at Georgia Tech," Serials Librarian 9:103-14 (Spring 1985); Thomas E. Smith, "Jour- nal Citation Reports as a Deselection Tool," Medical Library Association Bulletin 73:387-89 (Oct. 1985); Laura Neame, "Periodicals Cancellation: Making a Virtue out of Necessity," Serials Librar- ian 10:33-42 (Spring 1986); Judith A. Segal, "Journal Deselection: A Literature Review and an Ap- plication," Science and Technology Libraries 6:25-42 (Spring 1986). 7. Herbert S. White, "Strategies and Alternatives in Dealing with the Serials Management Budget," in Serials Collection Development: Choices and Strategies, ed. Sui H. Lee (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pierian, 1981), p.27-43. 8. Raymond M. Holt, Periodicals for the Asking: A Plan for a Periodicals Network (Del Mar, Calif.: Holt and Assoc., 1971). (ED 061-960); C. 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Carter and Scott Bruntjen, ''Pittsburgh Regional Library Center Serials Cancellation Proj- ect, 11 Library Resources & Technical Services 28:299-307 (Oct./Dec. 1984). 10. Charles R. Gallimore and Rebecca R. Martin, "Holder of Record: A Cooperative Health Sciences Journal System in a Hospital Library Network, 11 Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 68:271-73 Guly 19~0). 11. James T. Dodson and Laurence Miller, "Soaring Journal Costs: A Cooperative Solution," Library ]ournal105:1793-95 (Sept. 15, 1980). 12. Karen Brewer, Gary Pitkin, and Neal Edgar, "A Method for Cooperative Serials Selection and Cancellation through Consortium Activities," Journal of Academic Librarianship 4:204-8 (Sept. 1978). 13. Alfred N. Brandon and Dorothy R. Hill, "Selected List of Books and Journals for the Small Medical Library," Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 73:176-205 (Apr . 1985); Donald D. Henricks, "Interuniversity Council Cooperative Acquisitions of Journals," Texas Library Journal47:269-96 (Nov. 1971). 14. Harriet H. Carter and Raymond A. Palmer, "The Operation of a Rational Acquisitions Commit- tee," Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 65:61-66 Gan. 1977).