Why We Must Subscribe to Fewer Journals

Dean of Libraries Paula Kaufman

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Libraries around the country have been struggling to cope with collection budgets that cannot keep pace with the rapidly escalating prices of scholarly materials. UTK is no exception.

Because of the infusion of one-time funds and some generous additions to the Libraries' base budget we have not had to cut large numbers of serial titles since 1991.

Regrettably, our 1995/96 budget is flat, and we will neither be able to continue purchasing all of our currently-held periodicals subscriptions, nor maintain the present level of monograph purchases.

Many things have contributed to this international crisis in scholarly publishing. The explosion of specialized research has produced a proliferation of new journals. The vitality of the scholarly enterprise has resulted in the output of an ever-increasing supply of scholarly materials.

Commercial publishers, many of them located outside the United States, now control much of the market for scholarly publications.

This year, the weak U.S. dollar, the unprecedented rise in paper prices, and increases in U.S. postal rates are further fueling price increases for scholarly materials. Current estimates are that the prices of the monographs we buy will increase 5-8%, and the prices of our serials will rise by 15-19%.

The Libraries' base budget will not increase in 1995/96. We will have a clearer picture of the actual size of the differential between what we have to spend and the cost of what we want to buy later this summer, when publishers set their prices.

At present, Diane Perushek, Associate Dean for Collection Services, and Sandra Leach, Acting Head of Collection Development, are developing several phased approaches to reducing the number of items we can buy this year and in subsequent years, as we anticipate these price pressures continuing at least through the end of the decade.

We are committed to working closely with as many faculty as possible to ensure that we make the best informed judgments about what to cancel and what to purchase. We must finalize our list of cancellations by mid-September. Library Selectors will contact Departmental Representatives to develop lists of possible cancellations.