Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2000 09:41:01 -0500
From: Steve Black <blacks@MAIL.STROSE.EDU>
Subject: Re: keeping print vs. going online

My opinion on this is that going into the future, the print journal
collection should support browsing on three fronts:

1.  Reading for self-enrichment, as one might do with New York Review of
Books, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and so forth.

2.  Being able to see what the important topics are in a discipline at a
given time.  That is, provide enough print journals so a professor can say,
"Go look at the [blank] journals, see what researchers are investigating".
These should represent the best work in the field, i.e. be the top journals.

3.  Provide the high quality visual content that is expensive to reproduce
on the desktop, ala National Geographic, Communication Arts, Graphis, etc.

Of course the real challenge is to turn those principles into a list of
titles.  One thing I've tried that seems like it may be a good starting
point is to create a list of journals held since a certain date (I picked
1970) that receive a certain minimum number of uses.  The list I got for our
collection looks to be a reasonable list to work from.  Let me emphasize
that that list would just be a starting point, a step better that starting
with a blank page.

Steve Black
Reference, Instruction, and Serials Librarian
Neil Hellman Library
The College of Saint Rose
392 Western Ave.
Albany, NY 12203
(518) 548-5494
blacks@mail.strose.edu