We have been subscribing to a number of the Nature publications online for a few years now. During this same time, we have maintained a print copy of Nature and Nature Biotechnology. This can no longer be done as the price for the print copy has doubled in the past 4 years from roughly $1200/year to almost $2400/year for EACH title. As of January 2008, we will rely on electronic access only for those titles.
In addition, with the recent addition of online access to JAMA and 6 of the American Medical Association “Archives of” journals, the library will stop carrying the print copies of JAMA and Archives of General Psychiatry as of January 2008.
This is the direction journal access is taking in the 21st century. It used to be that a library subscribed to print collections of periodicals; students, faculty and staff needed to physically visit the library in order to view and copy articles.
Now, electronic journal collections, along with full-text article access through databases, is not only changing the landscape of the library but enabling our patrons to do library research no matter where they are — at home, in the library atrium, in the campus computer labs, even while eating lunch in the Market Cafe or enjoying a Jamba Juice on the lower level of University Center.
This “new world” of journal access has expanded the research options for students and faculty and is making it easier to find the articles needed for a term paper, a thesis literature review or a grant-funded empirical study.
If you want to learn more about how to use the library’s electronic resources, please visit the 2nd floor Periodicals Desk, the 1st floor Reference Desk or contact us through our Ask a Librarian web page.
Ever wonder where that journal went, especially since you drove all the way from home to the library to get it off the shelf and make a photocopy?
Here’s the scoop:
Periodicals are shelved alphabetically by title in the stacks; each title is shelved in chronological order, beginning with the oldest bound issues and continuing up to the latest received unbound issues. Every month we go out and gather bundles and prep (prepare) them for the bindery.
The library binds together individual issues of a journal title to better protect and preserve them. Depending upon the frequency of publication, along with the thickness of individual issues, titles are bound in volume sets ranging anywhere from monthly to yearly. The span of issues covered is printed on the spine of each volume.
As you look for a particular issue, you may notice there are a range of missing issues/years between the bound volumes and the most recent unbound issues. These missing items may be at the bindery or in bindery prep and that is why they are not on the shelf.
One way to check on this is to look at the library record for the journal in Ignacio (hint: search by Title of journal). This shows our holdings (Lib. Has: date range) plus some other information about the publisher and formats. If you click on the hyperlink “Latest Received,” this link will open a new window showing the check-in boxes for individual issues with the date and status – Expected, Arrived, etc. Here’s an example Seventeenth Century News
When a group of issues is gathered and sent to the bindery, all of the boxes for that group are set “To Bind” and the date they were shipped out is also displayed. Upon return of the bound volumes from the bindery, all the boxes are collapsed into one box for each volume & date range and the status shows as “Bound.” A set of issues sent to the bindery will return to the library shelves in 1-2 months.
So, if you are ever in the periodicals stacks and can’t find a group of issues you think should be on the shelf, they may be at the bindery. And, whether it’s a question of one or more issues missing from the shelf or a matter of needing some help finding articles in print or electronic formats, please don’t hesitate to come over to the Periodicals Service Desk and ask for assistance. We are there to help and would love to talk to you.
For faculty authors who want to know how to create an addendum to your publication agreement in order to retain access and distribution rights.
Want to retain rights over your soon to be published journal article? You can use the SPARC Author Addendum to amend the journal’s publication agreement.
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is an international alliance of libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.
To learn how to use the author addendum and obtain more information on author rights, see the SPARC author web page
These links are also now available on our library’s Faculty Services page: see the heading “Author’s Copyright Addendum”
So, in case you are wondering, here is a link to the library web page about Periodicals, our policies and procedures and a couple of photos of what we look like up here on the 2nd floor: Periodicals Unit
JAMA and other journals:
After a couple of years of wrangling we now finally have access from 1998-present for JAMA and the following 6 archive journals: Archives of Neurology, Archives of Internal Medicine, Archives of General Psychiatry, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, Archives of Dermatology and Archives of Surgery.
Search for them in our Journal Finder: Journal Finder
and follow the link to the American Medical Association Journals.
A little about this blog . . . I decided I needed a better way to tell students, faculty and staff about things that are happening in the library and in the Periodicals Unit, in particular. I will be writing about electronic journals as well as print journals; giving some “behind the scenes” insight into how the periodicals collection is acquired, managed and made accessible to USF students, faculty and staff; and providing some helpful guides on using and troubleshooting the various electronic resources available to the USF community. I hope you find this informative and interesting and that you let me know if there is something you just have to know about serials.
