Serials Review 2006

Why Review our Journal Collections?

Journal lists to review
By Title
By Subject Area/Call No.
By School/College Lists

More Information
Why review?
Timeline
Factors to Consider
FAQs
Subject Librarians

Serials Review Process
Letter to Deans & Chairs
Letter to the Faculty
Results

Serials Review History
2000 Review
2003 Review

The need to address library budget issues as well as continuing research and programmatic changes within the Institute requires a new review cycle of our journal subscriptions. 

This review will benefit from faculty input in assigning priorities to determine the best titles to retain in order to ensure that we have a collection that benefits students, researchers and faculty needs. Furthermore, the cancellation of less needed titles may provide opportunities to purchase more essential resources for the Georgia Tech community. 

Over the past eight years, academic libraries have seen an unprecedented increase in cost of journal subscriptions particularly in the science, technology, and medical (STM) publishing arena.

Price projections for 2007 lead us to believe that we will continue to experience a serials 'inflation' rate of 8-10 %. With the cost of scholarly journals rising much faster than the overall rate of inflation and the number of journals proliferating, university libraries around the nation are facing a "serials crisis"-often they simply cannot afford to maintain past levels of journal subscriptions.

Cost increases for academic journals have been well documented, thanks especially to the annual statistics compiled over many years by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Among ARL member libraries in the period 1986-2003, the price per subscription of serials rose by 215%. Notably, the Consumer Price Index rose by only 68% during the same period.