Because we have a severe space problem, we did withdraw the majority of
titles available in our JSTOR collections and have not been binding issues
that will appear in JSTOR.  We have been keeping them in Princton files in
the current issues area.  Currently I am reviewing the list to see which
have current issues available in other aggregated databases and will begin
'shrinking' the retention period for those titles.  We have the luxury of
being within driving distance of several research libraries.

Elizabeth Parang
Serials/Electronic Resources Librarian
Pepperdine University Libraries
Malibu, CA 90263
(310) 506-4046
elizabeth.parang@pepperdine.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: John Barnett [mailto:JBarnett@UTSA.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 1:20 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] JSTOR moving wall/to bind or not to bind

Hi all,

You probably have addressed this issue before; if there is an archive that I
may search to see responses, please feel free to direct me to it. And please
feel free to respond to me directly, off-list.

Our library subscribes to several JSTOR electronic collections. As you know,
for many of the journals in these collections, there is a moving wall of two
or more years (often four or more), during which current issues are
embargoed. That is to say, there may be a gap of several years between when
a journal is published and when it appears in JSTOR.

Our library subscribes to a number of print journals as well, some of which
eventually appear in JSTOR. Heretofore, we've been of mixed minds--in some
cases, we automatically bind these journals, even when they appear in JSTOR
later on; in other cases, we keep these titles in limited retention in our
current periodicals area until they appear in JSTOR. We are inconsistent
with this practice. In some cases, we have journals in current periodicals
that are more than four years old; in other cases, we bind within a year or
so of publication, regardless of when the title appears in JSTOR.

Assuming that no one else is necessarily being consistent and assuming that
when it comes to information, nothing much is consistent, anyway, I would be
interested in hearing from other librarians who have dealt with or are
dealing with this issue. In our present situation, we have left well enough
alone for as long as we've been able to. However, due to space restrictions,
we are moving many of our JSTOR titles to remote storage. I'm hesitant to
have to revisit this project in five or ten years because we've bound a
whole new set of journals to the stacks, which are now in JSTOR.

If any of you have any guidelines or observations you would like to share, I
would greatly appreciate hearing from you.

Thank you.

John Barnett

John Barnett
Head, Collection Development
University of Texas at San Antonio Library

6900 North Loop 1604 West
San Antonio, Texas 78249-0671

(voicemail) 210.458.4575
(fax) 210.458.4577
(email) <jbarnett@utsa.edu> or <librarycolldev@utsa.edu>
(url) <http://www.lib.utsa.edu>