Jean Bradford Serials and Inter-library Document Supply, University of Bristol

UKSG Serials Resource Management Seminar 12th October 2005.

2 Outline of this presentation

• Information about the University of Bristol

• Information about Information Services

• Why are serials so important

• Budgeting and financial management

• Collection management

• Management of our e-resources

• Any questions

3 The University of Bristol

• International community dedicated to learning,

discovery and enterprise

• A world leader in research and a member of the

World Universities Network and of the Russell

Group of Universities

4 Some facts and figures

• 45 Academic departments, 15 research centres

• Over 11,000 undergraduates

• Over 3,500 taught postgraduates

• Over 2,000 research postgraduates

• More than 5,500 staff of whom 3,000 are academic

staff or academic related staff

5 Information Services

• Library services are delivered through 13 Branch

Libraries

• Arts and Social Sciences Library (ASSL) is the

largest and also includes central administration

functions

• Serials Section is based in ASSL

6 Serials at the University of Bristol

• Over 8800 e-journals are listed in our e-journal

database

• The list of print subscriptions contains 3,648 titles

• We receive many serials as gifts

• Use Aleph 500 as the library management system

and use the Aleph Serials Module to control our

print subscriptions

7 People Involved in Serials

• 1 senior library assistant (FTE) plus Checkin

assistants

• Librarian in charge

• Director of Library Services controls the budget

• Content group advises on how the book and serials

budget should be spent

8 Why Are Serials Important?

• We spend a lot of money on them – the easy

answer

• They are very important to the staff and students of

the university

9 Budgeting and Financial Management

• Approx £2.5 million comes to the Library for

purchases of all kinds

• Serials are paid for before everything else

• The rest is divided between buying books, binding

and Inter-Library Loans

10 Share Between Headings, 2004-2005 Not Yet Available

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

%age

2001/02 2002/03 2003/04

Subject books

Journals

ILL

Binding

General books

11 Budgets

• When we are drawing up our budgets we do not

know what the prices for our serial subscriptions

will be

• We have to make a guess!

• You cannot easily reduce spending on serials

12 Collection management

• The serials you subscribe to need to be kept under

review – applies to both print and electronic

subscriptions

• You need a process for this. Sometimes it is done

on a small scale, e.g by one department ,or, as we

have done this year, all the titles to which we

subscribe have been reviewed

13 Some criteria for selecting our serials

• Relevance to current teaching

• Relevance to current research

• Existing strengths and special collections

• Academic significance

• Known or likely demand from users

• Intellectual level

• Price

• Language

14 Some additional criteria for electronic subscriptions

• File formats

• Operating systems

• Technical requirements

• User support

15 Serials review

• Process is lengthy. Time is needed to consult

users

• Must time the decisions so that it is possible to

cancel something if you want to

16 Moving from print+online to online only

• Users like e-journals – they can access them from

anywhere they are and at any time

• Users don’t have to spend time finding things in the

Library

• We are short of space and print take up a lot of

room

• Print can be away at binders, misshelved, left lying

in the Library…

17 However in the electronic world…

• More than one user can access the title (usually)

• You need to check the contract you have with the

supplier– To check if you can cancel or change– To check what arrangements are to access the

archives

Print+online has been seen as a “safe” option

18 Promotion of e-journals

• Branding is very important to us

• We currently have a separate database for e-

journals and our Library Catalogue only includes

our printed resources

• We are implementing Metalib and SFX to improve

the way in which our users can access all our

resources

19 Metalib and SFX

• More information about Metalib at Bristol is at

http://www.bris.ac.uk/is/library/metalib

• And about SFX at

http://www.bris.ac.uk/is/library/metalib/get-it.html

20 Managing e-journals

• Bibiliographical information must be recorded

• What does the subscription cover – the years

available to us, is it all full text or just abstracts or

tables of content?

21 Managing e-journals

• Contractual obligations – for an example of what a

licence may look like see the NESLi2 Model

Licence at http://www.nesli2.ac.uk/model.htm

• Verde details at http://www.exlibris.co.il/verde.htm

22 Authentication

• IP Address

• Athens

• Shibboleth – see http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

• Article in Ariadne -

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue43/mcleish/

23 Developments in publishing

• Institutional repositories – Bristol’s is called Project

Rose http://www.bris.ac.uk/is/projects/rose/

• Others are being developed – see Project

SHERPA http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/

• Open access publishing

24 And finally…

• Print+electronic will go hand in hand for some time,

however electronic will be the dominant format

• Serials are a team operation

• Sources of help are available especially the e-mail

list owned by UKSG - lis-ejournals. Another useful

one is lis-serials. See Jiscmail home page

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/