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E-journal Acceptance at Colorado State University
E-journal Acceptance at Colorado State University: A Case Study Donnice Cochenour and Tom Moothart Colorado State University faculty, graduate students, and administrative professionals were surveyed in Spring 2001 to determine their usage and acceptance of e-journals. A majority of respondents used e-journals at least monthly and preferred multiple access points on the Libraries Webpage and OPAC. Almost all respondents supported adding electronic access to print journal subscriptions, but fewer respondents supported canceling print subscriptions and relying on the electronic subscriptions. Respondents strongly supported having access to journal back runs older than four years and believed that the Libraries had a good balance of print and electronic resources. Serials Review 2003; 29:16–25. © 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Already hampered by a stagnant materials budget and staff that is stretched to acquire and maintain print materials, the Colorado State University (CSU) Libraries are increasingly pressured by some library users to add electronic resources. Like many other academic libraries, the CSU Libraries initiated a journal cancellation project in 2000 with the goal of containing the serials budget in order to provide funds for monographs. Duplicate serial subscriptions were one of the first areas to be scrutinized. The CSU Libraries attempted to cancel print subscriptions that had a duplicate electronic component. Titles that were part of the Academic International Digital Electronic Access Library (IDEAL) subscription were distributed to faculty as potential cancellation candidates. Although most of the duplicate Academic Press print journals were canceled, the CSU Libraries received many negative comments from faculty. Comments included statements that print journals have served researchers for centuries and will continue to best serve the researcher; others advised the CSU Libraries to not rely on the publisher to maintain perpetual archives of journal back runs; and others complained that the e-journal image quality was too poor to use for research purposes. Some faculty returned their comments with additional e-journal recommendations for purchase. During a controversial
journal cancellation project, decision makers often have difficulty discerning a majority opinion from a vocal minority of library users (or nonusers). When available, print and electronic journal usage statistics are useful, but whether access to an e-journal is equivalent to pulling a print journal off the shelf in the library is still a matter of debate. In an effort to aid future collection development decisions regarding the cancellation or retention of duplicate print journal subscriptions and to provide a campuswide view of e-journal usage, CSU Libraries distributed a survey in 2001 to University faculty, administrative professionals, and graduate students to determine their use and opinions of e-journals. The CSU Libraries have added e-journals, books, and databases to its collections since the late 1980s. In 2001, electronic resources constituted approximately 17% of the materials budget. The CSU Libraries have set a goal to increase the electronic resources commitment to 40% of the materials budget in the next four to six years. Although popular with students and faculty, CSU Libraries still receive complaints with regard to the use of library funds on what some users see as ephemeral electronic content. Because many of the current faculty were hired during the expansion of higher education in the 1970s, a large portion of CSU faculty are approaching retirement age in the next few years. As faculty retire, there may be less resistance to increasing the number of e-journals and canceling the print equivalents. According to Tim Ingoldsby, the American Institute of Physics electronic publishing director, a generation of users will be needed to replace print journals with electronic publications.1 Younger users will need to achieve a critical mass to allow the retirement of paper journals. With the large number of
Cochenour is Serials Librarian, Colorado State University Libraries, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1019; e-mail: donnice.cochenour@ colostate.edu. Moothart is Reference Librarian, Colorado State University Libraries, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1019; tom.moothart@ colostate.edu.
0098-7913/03$–see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. PII: S0098-7913(02)00267-8
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ferred both print and electronic formats.10 Carol Tenopir and colleagues conducted a survey at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1984 and did a follow-up survey in 2000. They found that readings from e-journals and databases had increased from 0% in 1984 to 35% in 2000.11 Acquiring parallel-published e-journals does expand access to scholarly research beyond the library building, but such access comes at the expense of increased subscription payments to publishers and an increased investment in the computer infrastructure. Drexel University’s W.H. Hagerty Library has aggressively canceled parallel print publications and relied on electronic copies, moving from 1,500 print publications in 1998 to 300 in 2001.12 Drexel canceled the print counterpart of e-journals and other low use titles. Cost savings realized from canceling the print copies and an infusion of funds into the library budget enabled the library to increase e-journal titles to over 6,300.13 Princeton University Library also canceled the print version of e-journals that were duplicated by its Academic IDEAL subscription.14 They rely on the electronic copy for all but nine of their 112 e-journal subscriptions, which were chosen because of confidence in the publisher’s stability and for the financial advantage.15 Each institution is unique among United States academic libraries. Drexel does not have the mission of maintaining a journal archive,16 and Princeton has no professional schools, only two professional programs and a small enrollment.17 Research libraries with professional programs, however, are currently involved in the study of use patterns in which only electronic versions are available to the user. The University of California System has moved parallel print journals to a storage facility and requires users to rely on the electronic copy for immediate access.18 The California study will determine whether providing electronic-only access has an adverse effect on users. The willingness of researchers to rely solely on e-journals is dependent, in part, on their successful use. Eileen Abels and colleagues found that factors that influence the use of electronic networks include the proximity to a computer, the computer experience of the users, and the network’s ease of use.19 The physical access to a networked workstation was the greatest determinant of network adoption. The system’s ease of use influenced the increase in network use and the number of services used.20 To interpolate the findings of Abels et al. to the acceptance of e-journals, determinants include the facilities’ technology infrastructure, the users computer skills, the number of Web access points provided by the library, and the accuracy and completeness of the content once the user arrives at the publisher’s Internet site. The print copy will continue to be used if navigating to the e-journal article is time consuming or if the retrieval process causes the researcher to lose confidence in the content of the e-journal. As early as 1996, Stephen Harter and Hak Joon Kim studied the stability of e-journal content.21 Less than half of the e-journals in a sample of 131 scholarly journals listed in the Internet World’s on Internet ’94 and the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists could be accessed on the first attempt. More than 40% of the e-journals studied had one or more problems with the data provided and, after repeated
retiring faculty, the CSU Libraries anticipate that this transition will occur soon. The graduate students have a high proficiency with the Web and computers so they are expected to be very supportive of canceling print equivalents and greatly expanding the number of e-journals available. CSU Libraries also expect opinions to vary by the colleges, based on anecdotal comments received during the journal cancellation project.
Literature Review Journal publishers have increased greatly the number of e-journals available by producing a parallel e-journal with the print publication. Some of the e-journals have more content, enhancements, and capabilities than do the print publications. Other publishers distribute e-journals with less content than the print publications or do not provide access to archival copies of the journal, so that it will not compete with the print for subscribers. Surveys of researchers have found an increased use and a greater sense of worth of e-journals as the numbers of parallelpublished journals have increased. In 1995, John Budd and Lynn Connaway found that only 8.4% of university faculty considered e-journals equal to print journals, and 77.1% did not think that they had sufficient experience with e-journals to evaluate them.2 In 1996, Suely Gomes and Jack Meadows conducted a survey of staff in the basic sciences at British Universities and found that 54% never used e-journals and only 16% used them at least monthly.3 Gomes and Meadows noted that “most of those who commented on this saw the way forward as being parallel publication of journals, where the print version already possessed high prestige.”4 Hilary Tomney and Paul F. Burton conducted a survey of British Universities’ academic staff in late 1996 and early 1997 and found that 28% of the respondents had used e-journals.5 They said that the well-established journal titles had started producing electronic versions that would increase the reputation of all e-journals. More recent surveys indicate that researchers’ usage of e-journals has greatly increased. Elka Tenner and Zheng Ye Yang surveyed faculty at Texas A&M University in 1998 and found that 36.4% had used e-journals, and 6.1% preferred that the library subscribe to print publications rather than the electronic versions.6 Texas A&M faculty in the College of Liberal Arts had the highest preference for print library subscriptions. In 1998 and 1999, Deborah Lenares conducted a survey of faculty at institutions whose libraries were members of the Association of Research Libraries.7 Lenares found that 46% used e-journals in 1998, and 61% used e-journals in 1999. Lenares also noted that in the 1999 survey, 49% of respondents reported “fairly frequent” or “frequent” e-journal use, and that the increased acceptance might be attributed to the increase in the number of parallelpublished journals.8 In 1998, Celelia Brown surveyed faculty in astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, and physics at the University of Oklahoma and found that less than 50% of the respondents used some form of e-journals to obtain journal articles.9 Brown also found that 62% to 65% preferred print journals, and a small fraction pre-
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attempts 10% could not be accessed with the URLs listed. The authors commented, “If e-journal articles cannot be accessed by the target audience when they are needed, their value is diminished.”22 The study also found a correlation between the success of a search and whether a subscription fee was charged.23 At the time of the study, e-journals were distributed via the World Wide Web, Listservs, FTP, and Gopher. Many publications were distributed in more than one format. With the almost exclusive migration to Web delivery of e-journals and the arrival of commercial publishers into e-journal delivery, the success rate, stability, and completeness of e-journals should have increased since 1996. A study conducted at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2001 using a selective sample of subscriptionbased e-journals with print duplicates found that some journals had issues missing, others had articles within issues missing, and some had color illustrations in the print version that were black and white in the e-journal version. Publishers’ responses to reported problems vary, with some errors present six months after notifying them.24 Unlike Drexel, many libraries do have the mission of maintaining an archive of scholarly research. If libraries cancel the print copy to enable increased access to e-journals, archival access becomes paramount. Vincent Resh noted that even though “librarians appreciate the archival traditions of the library much more than the average scientist does,”25 scientists are aware of the potential transitory nature of electronic publications. Some scholars fear that if the library no longer owns a hard copy of the publication, access could be lost, due to a natural disaster or a publisher’s demise. Suggested solutions include providing the library with a CD-ROM of the journal contents or creating a central depository.26 When a library acquires an e-journal, however, it purchases more than the content— it is also purchasing the search interface and the content links that enhance the electronic copy. If a library is forced to cancel a journal due to financial constraints, that library probably will not have the funds to develop a database interface to search the e-content. Leonard Kniffel noted that when he “talks to readers about whether they want electronic or print, they usually say yes to both.”27 As e-journals gain increasing acceptance, the question becomes less what users prefer but what libraries can afford. Libraries coping with journal inflation and stagnant budgets will no longer be able to pay extra for a print journal that is essentially duplicated by an e-journal. The CSU Libraries are concerned that moving researchers to electronic-only journal access may alienate and disenfrancise some of their core users of scholarly journals.
• what survey respondents consider the best mecha-
nism to access e-journals. • whether survey respondents find e-journals to be
equivalent or superior to print journals. • whether survey respondents support canceling print
subscriptions when they are duplicated by electronic equivalents. We chose a printed survey so that we could include the opinions of noncomputer users. At the time this study was conducted, the CSU campus still had a few faculty who did not have an e-mail account, and until late 2001, students were not required to have an e-mail account. The survey was sent to faculty and administrative professionals through the campus mail system. For mailing purposes, the CSU system lists employees as faculty, administrative professional, or classified staff. Classified staff serve a support role for the university. Research associates may be classified as either faculty or administrative professionals. To reach research associates who were classified as administrative professionals, however, we also had to include administrative professionals who were office support and did not make extensive use of the research literature on campus. Because many of the graduate students did not have a campus mailbox or a current mailing address, we asked academic departments to distribute the survey to their graduate students. We sent surveys to graduate students in the professional veterinary medicine program to their campus mailboxes. At the time of the survey, CSU had a student population of 23,934 students, including 3,736 graduate students; and employed 1,555 faculty and 944 administrative professionals. The university is a Carnegie I Land Grant Research Institution located in Fort Collins, Colorado. In addition to the campus population, it also supports fifty-seven cooperative extension offices, eighteen Colorado State Forest district offices, and ten Agricultural Experimental Station research centers. Researchers at federal and state agencies in the state also may hold faculty status at CSU. Agencies within Fort Collins include the National Forest Service, the Center for Disease Control, the National Seed Storage Laboratory, and the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The CSU Libraries consist of the Morgan Library, the Veterinary Teaching Hospital Branch Library, and the Atmospheric Branch Library. The CSU Libraries have provided access to e-journals since the mid-1990s. In 1997, the Morgan Library sustained water damage to its print collection, including approximately 200,000 volumes (60%) of the bound journal collection, most of which had imprints between 1980 and 1995.28 This disaster accelerated the acquisition of full-text databases and electronic journals. At the time of the survey, the CSU Libraries subscribed to approximately 2,000 e-journals, which were duplicated almost entirely by their subscriptions of over 10,000 print journals.
Methods In the spring of 2001, we distributed a printed survey (see Appendix A) to all CSU faculty, administrative professionals, and graduate students to determine:
Results
• whether survey respondents have adequate equip-
ment, computer skills, and Internet skills to utilize e-journals.
In the spring of 2001, 6,968 surveys were sent to faculty, graduate students, and administrative professionals; 725
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in the survey. Faculty in Liberal Arts and Applied Human Sciences and graduate students in Business, Engineering, and Veterinary Medicine were underrepresented in the survey. Because response to the survey was self-selecting, the greater response rate by Natural Sciences faculty and graduate students may be attributed to the larger number of e-journals that the CSU Libraries have licensed in those subject disciplines (see Appendix B for a list of all departments in the colleges). Some of the longest held e-journals were from the American Institute of Physics, Institute of Physics, Association of Computing Machinery’s Digital Library, American Mathematical Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, American Chemical Society, and others that primarily supported this college. We feel that even though the overall response rate was low and could be biased toward users of e-journals, the responses provide a preliminary assessment of users’ opinions and perceptions toward e-journals for the original questions.
Table 1. Graduate student response by college affiliation University college Agricultural Sciences Applied Human Sciences Business Engineering Liberal Arts Natural Resources Natural Sciences Veterinary Medicine Other
Percentage Graduate of Survey Percentage students university response of survey (n) population (n) response 251
6.72
16
4.97
669 226 474 462
17.91 6.05 12.69 12.37
65 4 25 35
20.19 1.24 7.76 10.87
261 546
6.99 14.61
32 66
9.94 20.50
847
22.67
37 42
11.49 13.05
Note: N 322. Graduate student response rate 8.6%.
Analyses
useable surveys were returned—a return rate of 10.4%. The faculty response rate (15.8%) was higher than the graduate student response rate (8.6%). Administrative professionals returned 120 useable surveys, with a return rate of 12.7%. Respondents’ demographics were compared with the University College affiliation of faculty and graduate student population to determine whether the survey responses accurately reflected the campus demographics. Tables 1 and 2 show that the distribution of survey responses closely represented the distribution of faculty and graduate students within several colleges. Graduate students represented under “Other” (n 42) did not include a department or list an interdisciplinary major. Faculty listed under “Other” (n 23) did not list a department or worked outside of the academic colleges, such as in the office of the provost or in the library. Based on the demographic analysis, the Natural Science faculty and graduate students were overrepresented
Computer Access and Skills Question: Do survey respondents have adequate equipment, computer skills, and Internet skills to utilize e-journals? When the CSU Libraries attempted to cancel print subscriptions for IDEAL e-journals, some faculty noted that others on campus did not have the appropriate computer hardware and skills to access e-journals. To address this issue, the survey asked respondents to identify whether they had access to a computer with Internet access and to describe the quality of that hardware and their own computer and information retrieval skills. These questions were included on the survey in an effort to determine whether specific constituents on campus were more or less inclined to use electronic resources due to basic hardware limitations or computer literacy issues. Because no criteria were given against which to rate hardware or skills, respondents provided their individual opinions or perceptions. The data was analyzed by college affiliation, age, and rank/status (faculty, administrative professionals, or graduate students). Overall, the responses indicate that 81.2% (n 718) had access to a computer at the office and 80% (n 718) had access at home, whereas 33% (n 719) had a computer in a laboratory setting. Only 1.4% (n 10), primarily graduate students, said that they had no computer access (excluding public computer labs). Eighty-four percent (n 659) described the quality of their office computer hardware as excellent or good, and 75% (n 641) rated their home computer as excellent or good. The majority of respondents rated their computer skills as excellent or good (81.6%, n 718) and their ability to retrieve information from the Internet as excellent or good (83.3%, n 718). Contrary to comments from users that e-journal delivery would disenfranchise users who did not have access to computers and the Internet, the campus technology infrastructure for graduate students, administrative professionals, and faculty was not a deterrent to the use of electronic resources as
Table 2. Faculty response by college affiliation University college Agricultural Sciences Applied Human Sciences Business Engineering Liberal Arts Natural Resources Natural Sciences Veterinary Medicine Other
Faculty (n)
Percentage of Survey Percentage university response of survey population (n) response
114
7.33
22
8.94
209 101 115 439
13.44 6.50 7.40 28.23
21 15 14 48
8.54 6.10 5.69 19.51
81 232
5.21 14.92
12 54
4.88 21.95
204 60
13.12 3.86
37 23
15.04 9.35
Note: N 246. Faculty response rate 15.8%.
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measured by access to workstations and computer skills to use them. A 2 test between colleges indicated no significant differences for quality of hardware or computer skills. There were differences, however, among age groups and rank/ status groups with regard to computer skills and information retrieval skills ratings. Respondents over age 45 rated their computer skills significantly lower (p .01, mean response 2.9) than did respondents age 30 years and under or respondents between the ages of 31 and 45 (mean response 3.1). Of those respondents who were aged 30 years and under, 88.3% rated their computer skills as excellent or good; 82% of the 31 to 45 age group said their computer skills were excellent or good; and only 72.5% of those over 45 rated themselves as excellent or good (see Table 3). The same held true for perceived information retrieval skills. The mean response for those over 45 was 2.9 compared with a mean response of 3.2 for each of the other two age groups. In the age 30 and under group, 91.7% of respondents rated their information retrieval skills as excellent or good, whereas 85.8% of respondents in the 31 to 45 age group and 70.1% of respondents in the over 45 age group rated themselves as excellent or good (see Table 4). Although these responses are all well above a simple majority, they do indicate an expected pattern that younger users perceive their computer and information retrieval skills as better than do older users. If one interprets these responses to indicate a comfort level using electronic resources, these ratings should increase in the near future, as the expected retirements of faculty occur. When analyzed by rank/status, fewer faculty rated their computer skills as excellent or good (76%) than did graduate students (84.7%), or administrative professionals (84%) (see Table 5). Perceived skills at information retrieval were highest for graduate students, with 89% rating themselves as excellent or good, whereas fewer faculty (79.3%) and administrative professionals (77.1%) rated themselves as excellent or good (see Table 6). Thus, it appears that the campus technology infrastructure was not a deterrent to the use of e-journals across campus; however, older users and faculty rated their computer skills and information retrieval skills as
Table 5. Computer skills rating by rank/status* Rank/status n Poor Fair Good Excellent Faculty 242 0.4% 23.6% 50.0% 26.0% Graduate students 321 0.6% 14.6% 64.5% 20.2% Other 144 1.4% 14.6% 57.6% 26.4% Note: N 707. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .01.
Table 6. Information retrieval skills rating by rank/status* Rank/status Faculty Graduate students Other
n 205 233 193
Poor 1.0% 0.9% 0.5%
Fair 10.7% 17.2% 26.9%
Good 65.9% 54.1% 54.4%
Poor 1.0% 0.0% 3.6%
Fair 7.3% 14.2% 26.3%
Good 61.5% 51.5% 49.0%
Good 50.0% 60.7% 47.2%
Excellent 29.3% 28.3% 29.9%
Preferred Access Question: What do survey respondents consider the best mechanism to access e-journals? Respondents were asked to indicate their preferred method of access/organization for e-journals. Options included an alphabetical list of titles on the CSU Libraries’ Website, subject lists of titles on the Web, links from the OPAC records, or links from database citations. Respondents were asked to check as many options as they liked and were given the opportunity to write in another option of their choice. The most popular option was links from the OPAC (65.2%, n 701), followed by subject lists on the Web (58.8%) and alphabetical lists on the Web (55.5%). The least popular option was links from citations in a database (39.4%). Even though this last option is a highly desirable method of linking to e-journal articles, it may be that it is not yet prevalent enough for most users to be aware of its power, and it is not the preferred choice when the user wants to browse a specific journal or find an article for which one already has a citation. Over 70% of the respondents marked multiple options for this question, indicating that users desire a variety of access methods. Comments included “all options sound useful” and “the more ways, the better.” There also were several requests for a “search engine.” In the spring of 2002, the CSU Libraries began the process of implementing the Ex Libris SFX software, which provides context-sensitive linking to electronic resources at the point of searching. This should drastically change how CSU libraries users will answer this question in the future.
Excellent 22.4% 27.9% 18.1%
Table 4. Information retrieval rating by age* n 205 233 194
Fair 16.9% 10.9% 21.5%
lower than did younger users and graduate students. This factor could influence faculty preference toward print publications rather than e-journals.
Note: N 631. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .01.
Age range 30 31–45 45
Poor 3.7% 0.0% 1.4%
Note: N 707. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .001.
Table 3. Computer skills rating by age* Age range 30 31–45 45
n 242 321 144
Excellent 30.2% 34.3% 21.1%
Frequency of Use Question: How often do survey respondents use e-journals? Respondents were asked to state how often they used e-journals. Choices were daily, weekly, monthly to yearly,
Note: N 632. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .001.
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Table 7. E-journal use responses by rank/status* Rank/status n Never Yearly Monthly Weekly Faculty 244 13.5% 10.7% 31.1% 33.6% Graduate students 318 7.9% 10.1% 30.2% 42.5% Other 144 24.3% 16.0% 35.4% 22.2%
ral Sciences (83.6%). Heavy users came from the colleges of Natural Sciences (64.2%), Veterinary Medicine (58.5%), and Engineering (58.2%). The college reporting the lowest number of frequent users was the College of Liberal Arts (61.4%) (see Table 8).
Daily 11.1% 9.4% 2.1%
Note: N 706. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .001.
Table 8. E-journal use responses by college College n Never Yearly Monthly Agricultural Science 49 8.2% 8.2% 42.9% Applied Human Sciences 94 10.6% 14.9% 45.7% Business 20 5.0% 5.0% 55.0% Engineering 55 12.7% 3.6% 25.5% Liberal Arts 83 20.5% 18.1% 33.7% Natural Resources 74 13.5% 16.2% 39.2% Natural Sciences 134 11.9% 4.5% 19.4% Veterinary Medicine 94 7.4% 8.5% 25.5% Other 112 19.6% 17.0% 27.7%
Preferred Format Question: Do survey respondents find e-journals to be equivalent, inferior, or superior to print journals? The question of format related to technical problems with regard to viewing, downloading, and printing articles, and the need for back files of e-journals. Overall, half (51.2%, n 625) of the respondents said they rarely or never had problems viewing e-journal articles, 40% sometimes had problems viewing, and 8.4% frequently or always had problems viewing e-journals. Although half of the respondents (n 625) said they rarely or never had problems downloading e-journals, 38.7% sometimes had problems downloading, and 9.2% frequently or always had problems downloading. In addition, 56.4% of the respondents rarely or never had problems printing e-journal articles, 33.4% sometimes had problems printing e-journal articles, and 10.2% frequently or always had problems printing. For purposes of analysis, the authors combined responses of “sometimes,” “frequently,” and “always” to identify colleges with viewing problems. The Colleges of Business (36.8%), Engineering (36.1%), and Natural Science (37.2%) had the least problems viewing e-journals, whereas the College of Applied Human Science (58.1%) and the College of Liberal Arts (57.8%) reported the highest level of viewing problems (see Table 9). The college with the most viewing problems, the College of Liberal Arts, also reported the lowest percentage of monthly or more frequent use of e-journals. This finding makes sense: if users have problems viewing articles, then they would not attempt to download or print articles. Respondents were asked how important e-journals older than four years were to them. This issue of timeliness or currency was of particular concern to the CSU Libraries because they still are in the process of replacing damaged journals from the 1997 disaster. Overall 82% responded that journals older than four years were somewhat important or very important. This response contradicted the often-stated opinion that only the latest five
Weekly Daily 32.7%
8.2%
25.5% 35.0% 50.9% 24.1%
3.2% 0.0% 7.3% 3.6%
27.0%
4.1%
47.8% 16.4% 44.7% 13.8% 27.7% 8.0%
Note: N 715. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.
and never. This question was used to gather information about general use of e-journals on campus and to eliminate responses of nonusers on future questions about perceptions of e-journal quality and problems with retrieval and printing. For purposes of analysis, the authors defined responses of monthly or more often as frequent users and responses of weekly or more often as heavy users. Overall, 75.4% (n 706) reported using e-journals monthly or more often, with more graduate students (82.1%) reporting the most use monthly or more often, followed by faculty (75.8%) and administrative professionals (59.7%) (see Table 7). This use pattern is consistent with graduate students’ higher perceived computer skills, which Abels, Liebscher, and Denman found to influence network use.29 Frequent users came from the colleges of Business (90%), Veterinary Medicine (84%), Agricultural Science (83.8%), Engineering (83.7%), and NatuTable 9. E-journal viewing problems responses by college College n Never Agricultural Science 45 4.4% Applied Human Sciences 86 4.7% Business 19 10.5% Engineering 47 6.4% Liberal Arts 64 1.6% Natural Resources 67 4.5% Natural Sciences 121 14.0% Veterinary Medicine 87 8.0% Other 89 2.2%
Rarely 40.0% 37.2% 52.6% 57.4% 40.6% 46.3% 48.8% 47.1% 39.3%
Note: N 625. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.
21
Sometimes 51.1% 43.0% 36.8% 34.0% 46.9% 43.3% 31.4% 33.3% 48.3%
Frequently 4.4% 11.6% 0.0% 2.1% 10.9% 4.5% 5.0% 8.0% 10.1%
Always 0.0% 3.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 1.5% 0.8% 3.4% 0.0%
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Table 10. Importance of journals 4 years old responses by college College Agricultural Science Applied Human Sciences Business Engineering Liberal Arts Natural Resources Natural Sciences Veterinary Medicine Other
n 45 85 18 47 66 64 119 88 91
Very important 44.4% 28.2% 22.2% 57.4% 50.0% 53.1% 57.1% 35.2% 25.3%
Somewhat important 42.2% 47.1% 38.9% 34.0% 36.4% 34.4% 35.3% 45.5% 40.7%
Not too important 11.1% 18.8% 38.9% 6.4% 13.6% 10.9% 6.7% 18.2% 29.7%
Not at all important 2.2% 5.9% 0.0% 2.1% 0.0% 1.6% 0.8% 1.1% 4.4%
Note: N 632. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.
the Colleges of Applied Human Sciences, Natural Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, Engineering, and the Others (mean response 3.0 for each) who supported canceling print (see Table 11). Respondents were asked what factors the library should consider when deciding to cancel a print subscription and retain only the electronic version. They were asked to check as many options as they liked and were given the option to write in another preference of their choice. Options included “Publisher Guarantees Perpetual Access to Older Journals,” “Lesser Used” or “Heavily Used” titles, “None, Library Should Not Cancel Print and Rely Only on Electronic,” and “Other(s).” The most important factor was “Publisher Guarantees Perpetual Access to Older Journals” (77.4%, n 686). There was much less support for canceling print based on use, whether “Lesser Used” (21.2%) or “Heavily Used” (11.4%), and only 16.2% said “None, the Library Should Not Cancel Print and Rely Only on Electronic.” Of those who answered “None, the Library Should Not Cancel Print and Rely Only on Electronic,” 32.1% were from the College of Liberal Arts (see Table 12). Although the support on campus was strongest for providing both electronic and print versions of journals, many of the colleges did favor canceling print journals duplicated by electronic versions if there was guaranteed
years of science journals are important to researchers. The College of Business showed the least support for older journals, with 61.1% answering somewhat or very important; whereas the College of Natural Science showed the most support for older journals, with 92.4% answering somewhat or very important; followed by Engineering, with 91.4% (see Table 10). The responses may have been skewed due to the university faculty’s close involvement in the flood recovery process. Cancellations of Print Format Question: Do survey respondents support canceling print subscriptions when they are duplicated by electronic equivalents? When there is a choice between print and electronic formats, respondents were asked whether CSU Libraries should purchase print only, electronic only, or both. Overall, 47.5% (n 689) preferred electronic only, 48.6% chose both, and only 3.8% said print only. Those respondents in the Colleges of Business (66.7%) and Engineering (61.5%) were most in favor of purchasing electronic formats only, whereas the College of Applied Human Sciences (66.7%) was the strongest supporter of both print and electronic formats. When compared by status, faculty (56.9%) were more supportive of electroniconly formats, where graduate students (59.3%) more strongly supported both print and electronic formats. In a similar question, respondents were asked whether they supported the CSU Libraries purchasing an e-joumal in addition to print, if available. In this case, 95.6% of all respondents supported or strongly supported dual print/ electronic subscriptions. Respondents were asked if they supported canceling a print journal and only subscribing to an e-journal if the CSU Libraries could realize a cost savings by doing so. Although still strongly in favor of the electronic format, the number dropped to 74.3% (n 689) supporting or strongly supporting this action; 25.7% opposed or strongly opposed canceling print. When analyzed by college, the College of Liberal Arts indicated the least support for canceling print and only subscribing to the electronic version. When tested using Least Squares Means, their support for canceling print was significantly less (p .01, mean response 2.6) than the support from
Table 11. Support to cancel print (keep only e-journal) responses by college Strongly Strongly College n support Support Oppose oppose Agricultural Science 48 20.8% 52.1% 18.8% 8.3% Applied Human Sciences 85 27.1% 45.9% 22.4% 4.7% Business 20 30.0% 45.0% 15.0% 10.0% Engineering 51 31.4% 49.0% 7.8% 11.8% Liberal Arts 83 15.7% 43.4% 26.5% 14.5% Natural Resources 69 23.2% 44.9% 23.2% 8.7% Natural Sciences 130 29.2% 48.5% 15.4% 6.9% Veterinary Medicine 91 28.6% 49.5% 18.7% 3.3% Other 112 29.5% 51.8% 12.5% 6.3% Note: N 689. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.
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Table 12. Factors to consider when cancelling print (keep only e-journal) responses by college Publisher guarantees None, perpetual Lesser Heavily don’t College n access used used cancel Other Agricultural Science 48 75.0% 22.9% 12.5% 16.7% 8.3% Applied Human Sciences 87 59.8% 26.4% 19.5% 20.7% 5.7% Business 19 84.2% 10.5% 10.5% 5.3% 5.3% Engineering 54 87.0% 16.7% 11.1% 7.4% 9.3% Liberal Arts 78 74.4% 25.6% 5.1% 32.1% 3.8% Natural Resources 73 74.0% 31.5% 6.8% 15.1% 13.7% Natural Sciences 126 84.1% 15.1% 11.1% 13.5% 11.9% Veterinary Medicine 90 80.0% 18.0% 8.9% 11.1% 7.8% Other 111 81.1% 19.8% 14.4% 15.3% 9.0% Total
686
77.4% 21.2% 11.4% 16.2%
Finally, questions were included in the survey to gather the perceptions of faculty about serials costs—both print and electronic. Responses regarding what added percentage the library should be willing to pay to include electronic access with a print subscription ranged from 0% to 200%. Responses suggesting a reasonable reduction in cost if the print subscription was cancelled and only the electronic version was received ranged from 0% to 200%. In both cases, responses tended to group around central points of 10%, 20%, 25%, 50%, and so forth. Comments indicated a lack of knowledge about subscription costs and the economics of journal pricing. These questions had a smaller response rate of n 408 and n 390 respectively, also indicating that many did not have an opinion.
Conclusion The decision to distribute this survey was an outgrowth of the CSU Libraries 2000 cancellation project, which generated a considerable number of faculty comments about the direction in which the collection was moving. Disparaging anecdotal comments from some faculty about the reliability of e-journals as scholarly vehicles led us to wonder how widespread this attitude was and to create a more comprehensive picture of the perceptions and use of e-journals across campus. The literature review indicated a continual increase in the use of e-journals over the past five to seven years, and a greater acceptance of them as the number of prestigious print journals that were available electronically increased. The results of this survey are consistent with that trend. One of the strategic goals of the CSU Libraries is to increase the percentage of electronic resources expenditures from approximately 17% in 2001 to 40% of the materials budget in the next four to six years. Due to the limited response rates of the survey and before specific actions are taken to cancel print subscriptions, departments will be given additional opportunities for input into the decision process. The survey results will provide departmental liaisons with preliminary information from which to continue discussions regarding the nature of the journal collection at CSU.
8.7%
Note: N 686. Each college does not equal 100% due to multiple responses.
perpetual access to the content. The strongest support for canceling print subscriptions existed in the Colleges of Engineering, Veterinary Medicine, and Natural Sciences. The College of Liberal Arts consistently ranked lowest for canceling print subscriptions. To meet faculty expectations for perpetual access, libraries must go beyond a simple license negotiation for access to those years for which a subscription was held if the title is cancelled. Perpetual access requires archival arrangements for continued access through a reliable third party such as JSTOR, OCLC, or the Library of Congress if the publisher ceases to exist. Libraries must be diligent about access and content issues in situations in which publishers merge or are bought outright, and in cases in which individual journal titles are sold by one publisher to another. During the journal cancellation project some faculty objected to canceling print journals at a time when the CSU Libraries were purchasing additional e-journals. To determine if this was a commonly held opinion across campus, we asked if the CSU Libraries had created a good balance between purchasing print and electronic materials. Overall, 59.5% (n 338) answered “Yes.” Surprisingly, 24.1% said “No, Too Much Is Spent on Print,” only 3.8% responded “Too Much is Spent on Electronic,” and 12.1% responded “Other.” Several respondents that checked “Other” included written comments that the CSU Libraries need to purchase more journals no matter what the format. Although this question had a low response rate—which was interpreted as either “no opinion” or a feeling of having no basis for making such a judgment—the fact that nearly one fourth of the respondents thought too much was being spent on print materials came as a surprise because earlier anecdotal comments from faculty suggested that the library was spending too much on electronic materials.
Notes 1. Tom Abate, “Publishing Scientific Journals Online.” Bioscience 47, no. 3 (March 1997): 175–9. 2. John Budd and Lynn Silipigni Connaway, “University Faculty and Networked Information: Results of a Survey.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 48 (Sept. 1997): 843–52. 3. Suely Gomes and Jack Meadows, “Perceptions of Electronic Journals in British Universities.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 29, no. 3 (April 1998): 174–81. 4. Ibid., 180. 5. Hilary Tomney and Paul F. Burton, “Electronic Journals: A Study of Usage and Attitudes Among Academics.” Journal of Information Science 24, no. 6 (1998): 419–29. 6. Elka Tenner and Zheng Ye (Lan) Yang, “End-User Acceptance of Electronic Journals: A Case Study from a Major Academic Research Library.” Technical Services Quarterly 17, no. 2 (1999): 1–11.
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Appendix A
7. Deborah Lenares, “Faculty Use of Electronic Journals at Research Institutions,” in Racing Toward Tomorrow: Proceedings of the Ninth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, April 8–11, 1999, edited by Hugh A. Thompson (Chicago: Association of Research Libraries, 1999), 329–34. 8. Ibid., 329. 9. Celelia M. Brown, “Information Seeking Behavior of Scientists in the Electronic Information Age: Astronomers, Chemists, Mathematicians, and Physicists.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50, no. 10 (1999): 929–43. 10. Ibid., 936. 11. Carol Tenopir, Donald King, Randy Hoffman, Elizabeth McSween, and Christopher Ryland, “Scientists Use of Journals: Differences (and Similarities) Between Print and Electronic,” in National Online 2001 Conference Proceedings (New York: Information Today, 2001), 469–81. 12. Carol Hansen Montgomery, “Measuring the Impact of an Electronic Journal Collection on Library Costs.” D-Lib Magazine 6, no. 10 (Oct. 2000); also available at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/ montgomery/10montgomery.html (13 November 2002). 13. Ibid. 14. David Goodman, “One Years’ Experience Without Print at Princeton,” in National Online 2001 Conference Proceedings (New York: Information Today, 2001), 183–9. 15. Ibid., 183. 16. Tom Hogan, “Drexel University Moves Aggressively from Print to Electronic Access for Journals.” Computers in Libraries 21, no. 5 (May 2001): 22–7. 17. Goodman, “One Years’ Experience,” 183. 18. University of California, “Collection Management Initiative, (CMI),” 26 July 2002. http://www.slp.ucop.edu/initiatives/cmi.htm (13 November 2002). 19. Eileen G. Abels, Peter Liebscher, and Daniel Denman, “Factors That Influence the Adoption and Use of Electronic Networks in Small Institutions: Part 1. Personal and Professional Factors.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 47, no. 2 (1996): 146–58. 20. Ibid., 155. 21. Stephen P. Harter and Hak Joon Kim, “Accessing Electronic Journals and Other E-Publications: An Empirical Study.” College and Research Libraries 57 (Sept. 1996): 440–56. 22. Ibid., 447. 23. Ibid., 454. 24. Sarah E. George, “Before You Cancel the Paper, Beware: All Electronic Journals in 2001 are Not Created Equal.” Serials Librarian 42, no. 3/4 (2002): 267–73. 25. Vincent Resh, “Science and Communication: An Author/Editor/ User’s Perspective on the Transition from Paper to Electronic Publishing.” Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 19 (Summer 1998); also available at http://www.istl.org/98–summer/article3.html (13 November 2002). 26. Sophie Wilkinson, “Electronic Publishing Takes Journals into a New Realm.” Chemical and Engineering News 76, no. 20 (May 18, 1998): 10–18. 27. Leonard Kniffel, “For Some Things, Print is Better.” American Libraries 32, no. 7 (August 2001); 36. 28. Camila Alire, ed. Library Disaster Planning and Recovery Handbook (New York: Neal-Schuman, 2000). 29. Abels et al., “Factors,” 150.
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Department of Manufacturing Technology and Construction Management Department of Occupational Therapy Department of Social Work College of Business Department of Accounting Department of Computer Information Systems Department of Finance and Real Estate Department of Management Department of Marketing College of Engineering Department of Atmospheric Science Department of Chemical and Bioresource Engineering Department of Civil Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering College of Liberal Arts Department of Anthropology Department of Art Department of Economics Department of English Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures Department of History Department of Journalism and Technical Communication Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance Department of Philosophy Department of Political Science Department of Sociology Department of Speech Communication College of Natural Resources Department of Earth Resources Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology Department of Forest Sciences Department of Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism Department of Rangeland Ecosystem Science College of Natural Sciences Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department of Biology Department of Chemistry Department of Computer Science Department of Mathematics Department of Physics Department of Psychology Department of Statistics College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology Department of Clinical Sciences Department of Environmental Health Department of Microbiology Department of Pathology Department of Physiology Department of Radiological Health Sciences
Appendix B Colorado State University Departments by College College of Agricultural Sciences Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Department of Animal Sciences Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management Department of Horticultural and Landscape Architecture Department of Soil and Crop Sciences College of Applied Human Sciences School of Education Department of Design and Merchandising Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition Department of Health and Exercise Science Department of Human Development and Family Studies
25
Already hampered by a stagnant materials budget and staff that is stretched to acquire and maintain print materials, the Colorado State University (CSU) Libraries are increasingly pressured by some library users to add electronic resources. Like many other academic libraries, the CSU Libraries initiated a journal cancellation project in 2000 with the goal of containing the serials budget in order to provide funds for monographs. Duplicate serial subscriptions were one of the first areas to be scrutinized. The CSU Libraries attempted to cancel print subscriptions that had a duplicate electronic component. Titles that were part of the Academic International Digital Electronic Access Library (IDEAL) subscription were distributed to faculty as potential cancellation candidates. Although most of the duplicate Academic Press print journals were canceled, the CSU Libraries received many negative comments from faculty. Comments included statements that print journals have served researchers for centuries and will continue to best serve the researcher; others advised the CSU Libraries to not rely on the publisher to maintain perpetual archives of journal back runs; and others complained that the e-journal image quality was too poor to use for research purposes. Some faculty returned their comments with additional e-journal recommendations for purchase. During a controversial
journal cancellation project, decision makers often have difficulty discerning a majority opinion from a vocal minority of library users (or nonusers). When available, print and electronic journal usage statistics are useful, but whether access to an e-journal is equivalent to pulling a print journal off the shelf in the library is still a matter of debate. In an effort to aid future collection development decisions regarding the cancellation or retention of duplicate print journal subscriptions and to provide a campuswide view of e-journal usage, CSU Libraries distributed a survey in 2001 to University faculty, administrative professionals, and graduate students to determine their use and opinions of e-journals. The CSU Libraries have added e-journals, books, and databases to its collections since the late 1980s. In 2001, electronic resources constituted approximately 17% of the materials budget. The CSU Libraries have set a goal to increase the electronic resources commitment to 40% of the materials budget in the next four to six years. Although popular with students and faculty, CSU Libraries still receive complaints with regard to the use of library funds on what some users see as ephemeral electronic content. Because many of the current faculty were hired during the expansion of higher education in the 1970s, a large portion of CSU faculty are approaching retirement age in the next few years. As faculty retire, there may be less resistance to increasing the number of e-journals and canceling the print equivalents. According to Tim Ingoldsby, the American Institute of Physics electronic publishing director, a generation of users will be needed to replace print journals with electronic publications.1 Younger users will need to achieve a critical mass to allow the retirement of paper journals. With the large number of
Cochenour is Serials Librarian, Colorado State University Libraries, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1019; e-mail: donnice.cochenour@ colostate.edu. Moothart is Reference Librarian, Colorado State University Libraries, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1019; tom.moothart@ colostate.edu.
0098-7913/03$–see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. PII: S0098-7913(02)00267-8
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ferred both print and electronic formats.10 Carol Tenopir and colleagues conducted a survey at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1984 and did a follow-up survey in 2000. They found that readings from e-journals and databases had increased from 0% in 1984 to 35% in 2000.11 Acquiring parallel-published e-journals does expand access to scholarly research beyond the library building, but such access comes at the expense of increased subscription payments to publishers and an increased investment in the computer infrastructure. Drexel University’s W.H. Hagerty Library has aggressively canceled parallel print publications and relied on electronic copies, moving from 1,500 print publications in 1998 to 300 in 2001.12 Drexel canceled the print counterpart of e-journals and other low use titles. Cost savings realized from canceling the print copies and an infusion of funds into the library budget enabled the library to increase e-journal titles to over 6,300.13 Princeton University Library also canceled the print version of e-journals that were duplicated by its Academic IDEAL subscription.14 They rely on the electronic copy for all but nine of their 112 e-journal subscriptions, which were chosen because of confidence in the publisher’s stability and for the financial advantage.15 Each institution is unique among United States academic libraries. Drexel does not have the mission of maintaining a journal archive,16 and Princeton has no professional schools, only two professional programs and a small enrollment.17 Research libraries with professional programs, however, are currently involved in the study of use patterns in which only electronic versions are available to the user. The University of California System has moved parallel print journals to a storage facility and requires users to rely on the electronic copy for immediate access.18 The California study will determine whether providing electronic-only access has an adverse effect on users. The willingness of researchers to rely solely on e-journals is dependent, in part, on their successful use. Eileen Abels and colleagues found that factors that influence the use of electronic networks include the proximity to a computer, the computer experience of the users, and the network’s ease of use.19 The physical access to a networked workstation was the greatest determinant of network adoption. The system’s ease of use influenced the increase in network use and the number of services used.20 To interpolate the findings of Abels et al. to the acceptance of e-journals, determinants include the facilities’ technology infrastructure, the users computer skills, the number of Web access points provided by the library, and the accuracy and completeness of the content once the user arrives at the publisher’s Internet site. The print copy will continue to be used if navigating to the e-journal article is time consuming or if the retrieval process causes the researcher to lose confidence in the content of the e-journal. As early as 1996, Stephen Harter and Hak Joon Kim studied the stability of e-journal content.21 Less than half of the e-journals in a sample of 131 scholarly journals listed in the Internet World’s on Internet ’94 and the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists could be accessed on the first attempt. More than 40% of the e-journals studied had one or more problems with the data provided and, after repeated
retiring faculty, the CSU Libraries anticipate that this transition will occur soon. The graduate students have a high proficiency with the Web and computers so they are expected to be very supportive of canceling print equivalents and greatly expanding the number of e-journals available. CSU Libraries also expect opinions to vary by the colleges, based on anecdotal comments received during the journal cancellation project.
Literature Review Journal publishers have increased greatly the number of e-journals available by producing a parallel e-journal with the print publication. Some of the e-journals have more content, enhancements, and capabilities than do the print publications. Other publishers distribute e-journals with less content than the print publications or do not provide access to archival copies of the journal, so that it will not compete with the print for subscribers. Surveys of researchers have found an increased use and a greater sense of worth of e-journals as the numbers of parallelpublished journals have increased. In 1995, John Budd and Lynn Connaway found that only 8.4% of university faculty considered e-journals equal to print journals, and 77.1% did not think that they had sufficient experience with e-journals to evaluate them.2 In 1996, Suely Gomes and Jack Meadows conducted a survey of staff in the basic sciences at British Universities and found that 54% never used e-journals and only 16% used them at least monthly.3 Gomes and Meadows noted that “most of those who commented on this saw the way forward as being parallel publication of journals, where the print version already possessed high prestige.”4 Hilary Tomney and Paul F. Burton conducted a survey of British Universities’ academic staff in late 1996 and early 1997 and found that 28% of the respondents had used e-journals.5 They said that the well-established journal titles had started producing electronic versions that would increase the reputation of all e-journals. More recent surveys indicate that researchers’ usage of e-journals has greatly increased. Elka Tenner and Zheng Ye Yang surveyed faculty at Texas A&M University in 1998 and found that 36.4% had used e-journals, and 6.1% preferred that the library subscribe to print publications rather than the electronic versions.6 Texas A&M faculty in the College of Liberal Arts had the highest preference for print library subscriptions. In 1998 and 1999, Deborah Lenares conducted a survey of faculty at institutions whose libraries were members of the Association of Research Libraries.7 Lenares found that 46% used e-journals in 1998, and 61% used e-journals in 1999. Lenares also noted that in the 1999 survey, 49% of respondents reported “fairly frequent” or “frequent” e-journal use, and that the increased acceptance might be attributed to the increase in the number of parallelpublished journals.8 In 1998, Celelia Brown surveyed faculty in astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, and physics at the University of Oklahoma and found that less than 50% of the respondents used some form of e-journals to obtain journal articles.9 Brown also found that 62% to 65% preferred print journals, and a small fraction pre-
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attempts 10% could not be accessed with the URLs listed. The authors commented, “If e-journal articles cannot be accessed by the target audience when they are needed, their value is diminished.”22 The study also found a correlation between the success of a search and whether a subscription fee was charged.23 At the time of the study, e-journals were distributed via the World Wide Web, Listservs, FTP, and Gopher. Many publications were distributed in more than one format. With the almost exclusive migration to Web delivery of e-journals and the arrival of commercial publishers into e-journal delivery, the success rate, stability, and completeness of e-journals should have increased since 1996. A study conducted at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2001 using a selective sample of subscriptionbased e-journals with print duplicates found that some journals had issues missing, others had articles within issues missing, and some had color illustrations in the print version that were black and white in the e-journal version. Publishers’ responses to reported problems vary, with some errors present six months after notifying them.24 Unlike Drexel, many libraries do have the mission of maintaining an archive of scholarly research. If libraries cancel the print copy to enable increased access to e-journals, archival access becomes paramount. Vincent Resh noted that even though “librarians appreciate the archival traditions of the library much more than the average scientist does,”25 scientists are aware of the potential transitory nature of electronic publications. Some scholars fear that if the library no longer owns a hard copy of the publication, access could be lost, due to a natural disaster or a publisher’s demise. Suggested solutions include providing the library with a CD-ROM of the journal contents or creating a central depository.26 When a library acquires an e-journal, however, it purchases more than the content— it is also purchasing the search interface and the content links that enhance the electronic copy. If a library is forced to cancel a journal due to financial constraints, that library probably will not have the funds to develop a database interface to search the e-content. Leonard Kniffel noted that when he “talks to readers about whether they want electronic or print, they usually say yes to both.”27 As e-journals gain increasing acceptance, the question becomes less what users prefer but what libraries can afford. Libraries coping with journal inflation and stagnant budgets will no longer be able to pay extra for a print journal that is essentially duplicated by an e-journal. The CSU Libraries are concerned that moving researchers to electronic-only journal access may alienate and disenfrancise some of their core users of scholarly journals.
• what survey respondents consider the best mecha-
nism to access e-journals. • whether survey respondents find e-journals to be
equivalent or superior to print journals. • whether survey respondents support canceling print
subscriptions when they are duplicated by electronic equivalents. We chose a printed survey so that we could include the opinions of noncomputer users. At the time this study was conducted, the CSU campus still had a few faculty who did not have an e-mail account, and until late 2001, students were not required to have an e-mail account. The survey was sent to faculty and administrative professionals through the campus mail system. For mailing purposes, the CSU system lists employees as faculty, administrative professional, or classified staff. Classified staff serve a support role for the university. Research associates may be classified as either faculty or administrative professionals. To reach research associates who were classified as administrative professionals, however, we also had to include administrative professionals who were office support and did not make extensive use of the research literature on campus. Because many of the graduate students did not have a campus mailbox or a current mailing address, we asked academic departments to distribute the survey to their graduate students. We sent surveys to graduate students in the professional veterinary medicine program to their campus mailboxes. At the time of the survey, CSU had a student population of 23,934 students, including 3,736 graduate students; and employed 1,555 faculty and 944 administrative professionals. The university is a Carnegie I Land Grant Research Institution located in Fort Collins, Colorado. In addition to the campus population, it also supports fifty-seven cooperative extension offices, eighteen Colorado State Forest district offices, and ten Agricultural Experimental Station research centers. Researchers at federal and state agencies in the state also may hold faculty status at CSU. Agencies within Fort Collins include the National Forest Service, the Center for Disease Control, the National Seed Storage Laboratory, and the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The CSU Libraries consist of the Morgan Library, the Veterinary Teaching Hospital Branch Library, and the Atmospheric Branch Library. The CSU Libraries have provided access to e-journals since the mid-1990s. In 1997, the Morgan Library sustained water damage to its print collection, including approximately 200,000 volumes (60%) of the bound journal collection, most of which had imprints between 1980 and 1995.28 This disaster accelerated the acquisition of full-text databases and electronic journals. At the time of the survey, the CSU Libraries subscribed to approximately 2,000 e-journals, which were duplicated almost entirely by their subscriptions of over 10,000 print journals.
Methods In the spring of 2001, we distributed a printed survey (see Appendix A) to all CSU faculty, administrative professionals, and graduate students to determine:
Results
• whether survey respondents have adequate equip-
ment, computer skills, and Internet skills to utilize e-journals.
In the spring of 2001, 6,968 surveys were sent to faculty, graduate students, and administrative professionals; 725
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in the survey. Faculty in Liberal Arts and Applied Human Sciences and graduate students in Business, Engineering, and Veterinary Medicine were underrepresented in the survey. Because response to the survey was self-selecting, the greater response rate by Natural Sciences faculty and graduate students may be attributed to the larger number of e-journals that the CSU Libraries have licensed in those subject disciplines (see Appendix B for a list of all departments in the colleges). Some of the longest held e-journals were from the American Institute of Physics, Institute of Physics, Association of Computing Machinery’s Digital Library, American Mathematical Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, American Chemical Society, and others that primarily supported this college. We feel that even though the overall response rate was low and could be biased toward users of e-journals, the responses provide a preliminary assessment of users’ opinions and perceptions toward e-journals for the original questions.
Table 1. Graduate student response by college affiliation University college Agricultural Sciences Applied Human Sciences Business Engineering Liberal Arts Natural Resources Natural Sciences Veterinary Medicine Other
Percentage Graduate of Survey Percentage students university response of survey (n) population (n) response 251
6.72
16
4.97
669 226 474 462
17.91 6.05 12.69 12.37
65 4 25 35
20.19 1.24 7.76 10.87
261 546
6.99 14.61
32 66
9.94 20.50
847
22.67
37 42
11.49 13.05
Note: N 322. Graduate student response rate 8.6%.
Analyses
useable surveys were returned—a return rate of 10.4%. The faculty response rate (15.8%) was higher than the graduate student response rate (8.6%). Administrative professionals returned 120 useable surveys, with a return rate of 12.7%. Respondents’ demographics were compared with the University College affiliation of faculty and graduate student population to determine whether the survey responses accurately reflected the campus demographics. Tables 1 and 2 show that the distribution of survey responses closely represented the distribution of faculty and graduate students within several colleges. Graduate students represented under “Other” (n 42) did not include a department or list an interdisciplinary major. Faculty listed under “Other” (n 23) did not list a department or worked outside of the academic colleges, such as in the office of the provost or in the library. Based on the demographic analysis, the Natural Science faculty and graduate students were overrepresented
Computer Access and Skills Question: Do survey respondents have adequate equipment, computer skills, and Internet skills to utilize e-journals? When the CSU Libraries attempted to cancel print subscriptions for IDEAL e-journals, some faculty noted that others on campus did not have the appropriate computer hardware and skills to access e-journals. To address this issue, the survey asked respondents to identify whether they had access to a computer with Internet access and to describe the quality of that hardware and their own computer and information retrieval skills. These questions were included on the survey in an effort to determine whether specific constituents on campus were more or less inclined to use electronic resources due to basic hardware limitations or computer literacy issues. Because no criteria were given against which to rate hardware or skills, respondents provided their individual opinions or perceptions. The data was analyzed by college affiliation, age, and rank/status (faculty, administrative professionals, or graduate students). Overall, the responses indicate that 81.2% (n 718) had access to a computer at the office and 80% (n 718) had access at home, whereas 33% (n 719) had a computer in a laboratory setting. Only 1.4% (n 10), primarily graduate students, said that they had no computer access (excluding public computer labs). Eighty-four percent (n 659) described the quality of their office computer hardware as excellent or good, and 75% (n 641) rated their home computer as excellent or good. The majority of respondents rated their computer skills as excellent or good (81.6%, n 718) and their ability to retrieve information from the Internet as excellent or good (83.3%, n 718). Contrary to comments from users that e-journal delivery would disenfranchise users who did not have access to computers and the Internet, the campus technology infrastructure for graduate students, administrative professionals, and faculty was not a deterrent to the use of electronic resources as
Table 2. Faculty response by college affiliation University college Agricultural Sciences Applied Human Sciences Business Engineering Liberal Arts Natural Resources Natural Sciences Veterinary Medicine Other
Faculty (n)
Percentage of Survey Percentage university response of survey population (n) response
114
7.33
22
8.94
209 101 115 439
13.44 6.50 7.40 28.23
21 15 14 48
8.54 6.10 5.69 19.51
81 232
5.21 14.92
12 54
4.88 21.95
204 60
13.12 3.86
37 23
15.04 9.35
Note: N 246. Faculty response rate 15.8%.
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measured by access to workstations and computer skills to use them. A 2 test between colleges indicated no significant differences for quality of hardware or computer skills. There were differences, however, among age groups and rank/ status groups with regard to computer skills and information retrieval skills ratings. Respondents over age 45 rated their computer skills significantly lower (p .01, mean response 2.9) than did respondents age 30 years and under or respondents between the ages of 31 and 45 (mean response 3.1). Of those respondents who were aged 30 years and under, 88.3% rated their computer skills as excellent or good; 82% of the 31 to 45 age group said their computer skills were excellent or good; and only 72.5% of those over 45 rated themselves as excellent or good (see Table 3). The same held true for perceived information retrieval skills. The mean response for those over 45 was 2.9 compared with a mean response of 3.2 for each of the other two age groups. In the age 30 and under group, 91.7% of respondents rated their information retrieval skills as excellent or good, whereas 85.8% of respondents in the 31 to 45 age group and 70.1% of respondents in the over 45 age group rated themselves as excellent or good (see Table 4). Although these responses are all well above a simple majority, they do indicate an expected pattern that younger users perceive their computer and information retrieval skills as better than do older users. If one interprets these responses to indicate a comfort level using electronic resources, these ratings should increase in the near future, as the expected retirements of faculty occur. When analyzed by rank/status, fewer faculty rated their computer skills as excellent or good (76%) than did graduate students (84.7%), or administrative professionals (84%) (see Table 5). Perceived skills at information retrieval were highest for graduate students, with 89% rating themselves as excellent or good, whereas fewer faculty (79.3%) and administrative professionals (77.1%) rated themselves as excellent or good (see Table 6). Thus, it appears that the campus technology infrastructure was not a deterrent to the use of e-journals across campus; however, older users and faculty rated their computer skills and information retrieval skills as
Table 5. Computer skills rating by rank/status* Rank/status n Poor Fair Good Excellent Faculty 242 0.4% 23.6% 50.0% 26.0% Graduate students 321 0.6% 14.6% 64.5% 20.2% Other 144 1.4% 14.6% 57.6% 26.4% Note: N 707. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .01.
Table 6. Information retrieval skills rating by rank/status* Rank/status Faculty Graduate students Other
n 205 233 193
Poor 1.0% 0.9% 0.5%
Fair 10.7% 17.2% 26.9%
Good 65.9% 54.1% 54.4%
Poor 1.0% 0.0% 3.6%
Fair 7.3% 14.2% 26.3%
Good 61.5% 51.5% 49.0%
Good 50.0% 60.7% 47.2%
Excellent 29.3% 28.3% 29.9%
Preferred Access Question: What do survey respondents consider the best mechanism to access e-journals? Respondents were asked to indicate their preferred method of access/organization for e-journals. Options included an alphabetical list of titles on the CSU Libraries’ Website, subject lists of titles on the Web, links from the OPAC records, or links from database citations. Respondents were asked to check as many options as they liked and were given the opportunity to write in another option of their choice. The most popular option was links from the OPAC (65.2%, n 701), followed by subject lists on the Web (58.8%) and alphabetical lists on the Web (55.5%). The least popular option was links from citations in a database (39.4%). Even though this last option is a highly desirable method of linking to e-journal articles, it may be that it is not yet prevalent enough for most users to be aware of its power, and it is not the preferred choice when the user wants to browse a specific journal or find an article for which one already has a citation. Over 70% of the respondents marked multiple options for this question, indicating that users desire a variety of access methods. Comments included “all options sound useful” and “the more ways, the better.” There also were several requests for a “search engine.” In the spring of 2002, the CSU Libraries began the process of implementing the Ex Libris SFX software, which provides context-sensitive linking to electronic resources at the point of searching. This should drastically change how CSU libraries users will answer this question in the future.
Excellent 22.4% 27.9% 18.1%
Table 4. Information retrieval rating by age* n 205 233 194
Fair 16.9% 10.9% 21.5%
lower than did younger users and graduate students. This factor could influence faculty preference toward print publications rather than e-journals.
Note: N 631. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .01.
Age range 30 31–45 45
Poor 3.7% 0.0% 1.4%
Note: N 707. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .001.
Table 3. Computer skills rating by age* Age range 30 31–45 45
n 242 321 144
Excellent 30.2% 34.3% 21.1%
Frequency of Use Question: How often do survey respondents use e-journals? Respondents were asked to state how often they used e-journals. Choices were daily, weekly, monthly to yearly,
Note: N 632. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .001.
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Table 7. E-journal use responses by rank/status* Rank/status n Never Yearly Monthly Weekly Faculty 244 13.5% 10.7% 31.1% 33.6% Graduate students 318 7.9% 10.1% 30.2% 42.5% Other 144 24.3% 16.0% 35.4% 22.2%
ral Sciences (83.6%). Heavy users came from the colleges of Natural Sciences (64.2%), Veterinary Medicine (58.5%), and Engineering (58.2%). The college reporting the lowest number of frequent users was the College of Liberal Arts (61.4%) (see Table 8).
Daily 11.1% 9.4% 2.1%
Note: N 706. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding. *p .001.
Table 8. E-journal use responses by college College n Never Yearly Monthly Agricultural Science 49 8.2% 8.2% 42.9% Applied Human Sciences 94 10.6% 14.9% 45.7% Business 20 5.0% 5.0% 55.0% Engineering 55 12.7% 3.6% 25.5% Liberal Arts 83 20.5% 18.1% 33.7% Natural Resources 74 13.5% 16.2% 39.2% Natural Sciences 134 11.9% 4.5% 19.4% Veterinary Medicine 94 7.4% 8.5% 25.5% Other 112 19.6% 17.0% 27.7%
Preferred Format Question: Do survey respondents find e-journals to be equivalent, inferior, or superior to print journals? The question of format related to technical problems with regard to viewing, downloading, and printing articles, and the need for back files of e-journals. Overall, half (51.2%, n 625) of the respondents said they rarely or never had problems viewing e-journal articles, 40% sometimes had problems viewing, and 8.4% frequently or always had problems viewing e-journals. Although half of the respondents (n 625) said they rarely or never had problems downloading e-journals, 38.7% sometimes had problems downloading, and 9.2% frequently or always had problems downloading. In addition, 56.4% of the respondents rarely or never had problems printing e-journal articles, 33.4% sometimes had problems printing e-journal articles, and 10.2% frequently or always had problems printing. For purposes of analysis, the authors combined responses of “sometimes,” “frequently,” and “always” to identify colleges with viewing problems. The Colleges of Business (36.8%), Engineering (36.1%), and Natural Science (37.2%) had the least problems viewing e-journals, whereas the College of Applied Human Science (58.1%) and the College of Liberal Arts (57.8%) reported the highest level of viewing problems (see Table 9). The college with the most viewing problems, the College of Liberal Arts, also reported the lowest percentage of monthly or more frequent use of e-journals. This finding makes sense: if users have problems viewing articles, then they would not attempt to download or print articles. Respondents were asked how important e-journals older than four years were to them. This issue of timeliness or currency was of particular concern to the CSU Libraries because they still are in the process of replacing damaged journals from the 1997 disaster. Overall 82% responded that journals older than four years were somewhat important or very important. This response contradicted the often-stated opinion that only the latest five
Weekly Daily 32.7%
8.2%
25.5% 35.0% 50.9% 24.1%
3.2% 0.0% 7.3% 3.6%
27.0%
4.1%
47.8% 16.4% 44.7% 13.8% 27.7% 8.0%
Note: N 715. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.
and never. This question was used to gather information about general use of e-journals on campus and to eliminate responses of nonusers on future questions about perceptions of e-journal quality and problems with retrieval and printing. For purposes of analysis, the authors defined responses of monthly or more often as frequent users and responses of weekly or more often as heavy users. Overall, 75.4% (n 706) reported using e-journals monthly or more often, with more graduate students (82.1%) reporting the most use monthly or more often, followed by faculty (75.8%) and administrative professionals (59.7%) (see Table 7). This use pattern is consistent with graduate students’ higher perceived computer skills, which Abels, Liebscher, and Denman found to influence network use.29 Frequent users came from the colleges of Business (90%), Veterinary Medicine (84%), Agricultural Science (83.8%), Engineering (83.7%), and NatuTable 9. E-journal viewing problems responses by college College n Never Agricultural Science 45 4.4% Applied Human Sciences 86 4.7% Business 19 10.5% Engineering 47 6.4% Liberal Arts 64 1.6% Natural Resources 67 4.5% Natural Sciences 121 14.0% Veterinary Medicine 87 8.0% Other 89 2.2%
Rarely 40.0% 37.2% 52.6% 57.4% 40.6% 46.3% 48.8% 47.1% 39.3%
Note: N 625. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.
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Sometimes 51.1% 43.0% 36.8% 34.0% 46.9% 43.3% 31.4% 33.3% 48.3%
Frequently 4.4% 11.6% 0.0% 2.1% 10.9% 4.5% 5.0% 8.0% 10.1%
Always 0.0% 3.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 1.5% 0.8% 3.4% 0.0%
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Table 10. Importance of journals 4 years old responses by college College Agricultural Science Applied Human Sciences Business Engineering Liberal Arts Natural Resources Natural Sciences Veterinary Medicine Other
n 45 85 18 47 66 64 119 88 91
Very important 44.4% 28.2% 22.2% 57.4% 50.0% 53.1% 57.1% 35.2% 25.3%
Somewhat important 42.2% 47.1% 38.9% 34.0% 36.4% 34.4% 35.3% 45.5% 40.7%
Not too important 11.1% 18.8% 38.9% 6.4% 13.6% 10.9% 6.7% 18.2% 29.7%
Not at all important 2.2% 5.9% 0.0% 2.1% 0.0% 1.6% 0.8% 1.1% 4.4%
Note: N 632. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.
the Colleges of Applied Human Sciences, Natural Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, Engineering, and the Others (mean response 3.0 for each) who supported canceling print (see Table 11). Respondents were asked what factors the library should consider when deciding to cancel a print subscription and retain only the electronic version. They were asked to check as many options as they liked and were given the option to write in another preference of their choice. Options included “Publisher Guarantees Perpetual Access to Older Journals,” “Lesser Used” or “Heavily Used” titles, “None, Library Should Not Cancel Print and Rely Only on Electronic,” and “Other(s).” The most important factor was “Publisher Guarantees Perpetual Access to Older Journals” (77.4%, n 686). There was much less support for canceling print based on use, whether “Lesser Used” (21.2%) or “Heavily Used” (11.4%), and only 16.2% said “None, the Library Should Not Cancel Print and Rely Only on Electronic.” Of those who answered “None, the Library Should Not Cancel Print and Rely Only on Electronic,” 32.1% were from the College of Liberal Arts (see Table 12). Although the support on campus was strongest for providing both electronic and print versions of journals, many of the colleges did favor canceling print journals duplicated by electronic versions if there was guaranteed
years of science journals are important to researchers. The College of Business showed the least support for older journals, with 61.1% answering somewhat or very important; whereas the College of Natural Science showed the most support for older journals, with 92.4% answering somewhat or very important; followed by Engineering, with 91.4% (see Table 10). The responses may have been skewed due to the university faculty’s close involvement in the flood recovery process. Cancellations of Print Format Question: Do survey respondents support canceling print subscriptions when they are duplicated by electronic equivalents? When there is a choice between print and electronic formats, respondents were asked whether CSU Libraries should purchase print only, electronic only, or both. Overall, 47.5% (n 689) preferred electronic only, 48.6% chose both, and only 3.8% said print only. Those respondents in the Colleges of Business (66.7%) and Engineering (61.5%) were most in favor of purchasing electronic formats only, whereas the College of Applied Human Sciences (66.7%) was the strongest supporter of both print and electronic formats. When compared by status, faculty (56.9%) were more supportive of electroniconly formats, where graduate students (59.3%) more strongly supported both print and electronic formats. In a similar question, respondents were asked whether they supported the CSU Libraries purchasing an e-joumal in addition to print, if available. In this case, 95.6% of all respondents supported or strongly supported dual print/ electronic subscriptions. Respondents were asked if they supported canceling a print journal and only subscribing to an e-journal if the CSU Libraries could realize a cost savings by doing so. Although still strongly in favor of the electronic format, the number dropped to 74.3% (n 689) supporting or strongly supporting this action; 25.7% opposed or strongly opposed canceling print. When analyzed by college, the College of Liberal Arts indicated the least support for canceling print and only subscribing to the electronic version. When tested using Least Squares Means, their support for canceling print was significantly less (p .01, mean response 2.6) than the support from
Table 11. Support to cancel print (keep only e-journal) responses by college Strongly Strongly College n support Support Oppose oppose Agricultural Science 48 20.8% 52.1% 18.8% 8.3% Applied Human Sciences 85 27.1% 45.9% 22.4% 4.7% Business 20 30.0% 45.0% 15.0% 10.0% Engineering 51 31.4% 49.0% 7.8% 11.8% Liberal Arts 83 15.7% 43.4% 26.5% 14.5% Natural Resources 69 23.2% 44.9% 23.2% 8.7% Natural Sciences 130 29.2% 48.5% 15.4% 6.9% Veterinary Medicine 91 28.6% 49.5% 18.7% 3.3% Other 112 29.5% 51.8% 12.5% 6.3% Note: N 689. Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.
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Table 12. Factors to consider when cancelling print (keep only e-journal) responses by college Publisher guarantees None, perpetual Lesser Heavily don’t College n access used used cancel Other Agricultural Science 48 75.0% 22.9% 12.5% 16.7% 8.3% Applied Human Sciences 87 59.8% 26.4% 19.5% 20.7% 5.7% Business 19 84.2% 10.5% 10.5% 5.3% 5.3% Engineering 54 87.0% 16.7% 11.1% 7.4% 9.3% Liberal Arts 78 74.4% 25.6% 5.1% 32.1% 3.8% Natural Resources 73 74.0% 31.5% 6.8% 15.1% 13.7% Natural Sciences 126 84.1% 15.1% 11.1% 13.5% 11.9% Veterinary Medicine 90 80.0% 18.0% 8.9% 11.1% 7.8% Other 111 81.1% 19.8% 14.4% 15.3% 9.0% Total
686
77.4% 21.2% 11.4% 16.2%
Finally, questions were included in the survey to gather the perceptions of faculty about serials costs—both print and electronic. Responses regarding what added percentage the library should be willing to pay to include electronic access with a print subscription ranged from 0% to 200%. Responses suggesting a reasonable reduction in cost if the print subscription was cancelled and only the electronic version was received ranged from 0% to 200%. In both cases, responses tended to group around central points of 10%, 20%, 25%, 50%, and so forth. Comments indicated a lack of knowledge about subscription costs and the economics of journal pricing. These questions had a smaller response rate of n 408 and n 390 respectively, also indicating that many did not have an opinion.
Conclusion The decision to distribute this survey was an outgrowth of the CSU Libraries 2000 cancellation project, which generated a considerable number of faculty comments about the direction in which the collection was moving. Disparaging anecdotal comments from some faculty about the reliability of e-journals as scholarly vehicles led us to wonder how widespread this attitude was and to create a more comprehensive picture of the perceptions and use of e-journals across campus. The literature review indicated a continual increase in the use of e-journals over the past five to seven years, and a greater acceptance of them as the number of prestigious print journals that were available electronically increased. The results of this survey are consistent with that trend. One of the strategic goals of the CSU Libraries is to increase the percentage of electronic resources expenditures from approximately 17% in 2001 to 40% of the materials budget in the next four to six years. Due to the limited response rates of the survey and before specific actions are taken to cancel print subscriptions, departments will be given additional opportunities for input into the decision process. The survey results will provide departmental liaisons with preliminary information from which to continue discussions regarding the nature of the journal collection at CSU.
8.7%
Note: N 686. Each college does not equal 100% due to multiple responses.
perpetual access to the content. The strongest support for canceling print subscriptions existed in the Colleges of Engineering, Veterinary Medicine, and Natural Sciences. The College of Liberal Arts consistently ranked lowest for canceling print subscriptions. To meet faculty expectations for perpetual access, libraries must go beyond a simple license negotiation for access to those years for which a subscription was held if the title is cancelled. Perpetual access requires archival arrangements for continued access through a reliable third party such as JSTOR, OCLC, or the Library of Congress if the publisher ceases to exist. Libraries must be diligent about access and content issues in situations in which publishers merge or are bought outright, and in cases in which individual journal titles are sold by one publisher to another. During the journal cancellation project some faculty objected to canceling print journals at a time when the CSU Libraries were purchasing additional e-journals. To determine if this was a commonly held opinion across campus, we asked if the CSU Libraries had created a good balance between purchasing print and electronic materials. Overall, 59.5% (n 338) answered “Yes.” Surprisingly, 24.1% said “No, Too Much Is Spent on Print,” only 3.8% responded “Too Much is Spent on Electronic,” and 12.1% responded “Other.” Several respondents that checked “Other” included written comments that the CSU Libraries need to purchase more journals no matter what the format. Although this question had a low response rate—which was interpreted as either “no opinion” or a feeling of having no basis for making such a judgment—the fact that nearly one fourth of the respondents thought too much was being spent on print materials came as a surprise because earlier anecdotal comments from faculty suggested that the library was spending too much on electronic materials.
Notes 1. Tom Abate, “Publishing Scientific Journals Online.” Bioscience 47, no. 3 (March 1997): 175–9. 2. John Budd and Lynn Silipigni Connaway, “University Faculty and Networked Information: Results of a Survey.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 48 (Sept. 1997): 843–52. 3. Suely Gomes and Jack Meadows, “Perceptions of Electronic Journals in British Universities.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 29, no. 3 (April 1998): 174–81. 4. Ibid., 180. 5. Hilary Tomney and Paul F. Burton, “Electronic Journals: A Study of Usage and Attitudes Among Academics.” Journal of Information Science 24, no. 6 (1998): 419–29. 6. Elka Tenner and Zheng Ye (Lan) Yang, “End-User Acceptance of Electronic Journals: A Case Study from a Major Academic Research Library.” Technical Services Quarterly 17, no. 2 (1999): 1–11.
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Appendix A
7. Deborah Lenares, “Faculty Use of Electronic Journals at Research Institutions,” in Racing Toward Tomorrow: Proceedings of the Ninth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, April 8–11, 1999, edited by Hugh A. Thompson (Chicago: Association of Research Libraries, 1999), 329–34. 8. Ibid., 329. 9. Celelia M. Brown, “Information Seeking Behavior of Scientists in the Electronic Information Age: Astronomers, Chemists, Mathematicians, and Physicists.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50, no. 10 (1999): 929–43. 10. Ibid., 936. 11. Carol Tenopir, Donald King, Randy Hoffman, Elizabeth McSween, and Christopher Ryland, “Scientists Use of Journals: Differences (and Similarities) Between Print and Electronic,” in National Online 2001 Conference Proceedings (New York: Information Today, 2001), 469–81. 12. Carol Hansen Montgomery, “Measuring the Impact of an Electronic Journal Collection on Library Costs.” D-Lib Magazine 6, no. 10 (Oct. 2000); also available at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/ montgomery/10montgomery.html (13 November 2002). 13. Ibid. 14. David Goodman, “One Years’ Experience Without Print at Princeton,” in National Online 2001 Conference Proceedings (New York: Information Today, 2001), 183–9. 15. Ibid., 183. 16. Tom Hogan, “Drexel University Moves Aggressively from Print to Electronic Access for Journals.” Computers in Libraries 21, no. 5 (May 2001): 22–7. 17. Goodman, “One Years’ Experience,” 183. 18. University of California, “Collection Management Initiative, (CMI),” 26 July 2002. http://www.slp.ucop.edu/initiatives/cmi.htm (13 November 2002). 19. Eileen G. Abels, Peter Liebscher, and Daniel Denman, “Factors That Influence the Adoption and Use of Electronic Networks in Small Institutions: Part 1. Personal and Professional Factors.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 47, no. 2 (1996): 146–58. 20. Ibid., 155. 21. Stephen P. Harter and Hak Joon Kim, “Accessing Electronic Journals and Other E-Publications: An Empirical Study.” College and Research Libraries 57 (Sept. 1996): 440–56. 22. Ibid., 447. 23. Ibid., 454. 24. Sarah E. George, “Before You Cancel the Paper, Beware: All Electronic Journals in 2001 are Not Created Equal.” Serials Librarian 42, no. 3/4 (2002): 267–73. 25. Vincent Resh, “Science and Communication: An Author/Editor/ User’s Perspective on the Transition from Paper to Electronic Publishing.” Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 19 (Summer 1998); also available at http://www.istl.org/98–summer/article3.html (13 November 2002). 26. Sophie Wilkinson, “Electronic Publishing Takes Journals into a New Realm.” Chemical and Engineering News 76, no. 20 (May 18, 1998): 10–18. 27. Leonard Kniffel, “For Some Things, Print is Better.” American Libraries 32, no. 7 (August 2001); 36. 28. Camila Alire, ed. Library Disaster Planning and Recovery Handbook (New York: Neal-Schuman, 2000). 29. Abels et al., “Factors,” 150.
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Department of Manufacturing Technology and Construction Management Department of Occupational Therapy Department of Social Work College of Business Department of Accounting Department of Computer Information Systems Department of Finance and Real Estate Department of Management Department of Marketing College of Engineering Department of Atmospheric Science Department of Chemical and Bioresource Engineering Department of Civil Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering College of Liberal Arts Department of Anthropology Department of Art Department of Economics Department of English Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures Department of History Department of Journalism and Technical Communication Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance Department of Philosophy Department of Political Science Department of Sociology Department of Speech Communication College of Natural Resources Department of Earth Resources Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology Department of Forest Sciences Department of Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism Department of Rangeland Ecosystem Science College of Natural Sciences Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department of Biology Department of Chemistry Department of Computer Science Department of Mathematics Department of Physics Department of Psychology Department of Statistics College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology Department of Clinical Sciences Department of Environmental Health Department of Microbiology Department of Pathology Department of Physiology Department of Radiological Health Sciences
Appendix B Colorado State University Departments by College College of Agricultural Sciences Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Department of Animal Sciences Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management Department of Horticultural and Landscape Architecture Department of Soil and Crop Sciences College of Applied Human Sciences School of Education Department of Design and Merchandising Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition Department of Health and Exercise Science Department of Human Development and Family Studies
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