Resource Sharing Fills Patron Needs Amid Journal Cancellations

Gabriella Reznowski remembers when journals still came only in print. Her father, an English professor, would watch the mail deliveries waiting for two key journals that he had personal subscriptions to.

“He waited in anticipation for each quarterly issue, and if they didn’t come by the expected date, he would go around the house asking us if we had seen them,” said Reznowski, WSU librarian for business, economics, music, and foreign languages. “I remember watching him curiously as he would sit in his easy chair and read through an entire issue, from cover to cover, with great interest.”

Reznowski said professors still wait eagerly for the current issue of their journals, even though they now access them online. Recent collections data show that WSU researchers downloaded 1,882,721 articles last year, or 5,158 articles every day.

But many academic and research libraries around the world, including those at WSU, have had to cancel journal subscriptions because of increasing costs charged by publishers and flat budgets. At the end of September, WSU Libraries’ Interim Dean Trevor Bond announced that the libraries would cancel $175,000 in subscriptions to balance collections this fiscal year. The libraries will also limit monograph purchases except for faculty requests and e-books.

Bond tasked a small group of librarians to review journal packages and databases and make recommendations for a reduction of more than $600,000 next year. The libraries will share the proposed reductions during the spring semester for feedback, undertake a final review in the summer, and then implement the cancellations in September.

“With every round of journal cancellations, I am reminded of the fact that all researchers have specific key journals that are very important to their research,” Reznowski said. “Keeping up on the literature published in these journals informs them on the direction of the field and allows them to remain current on new research, discussions, controversies, and publications. It is frustrating not to be able to access an entire issue when a journal is cancelled.”

Libraries band together to provide journal access

Access Services Manager Brian McManus said WSU Libraries work with different strategic library partners in diverse ways to fulfill patron requests for physical materials and e-books and for digital scans of book chapters and articles.

The WSU Libraries are part of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a consortium of 38 libraries in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The institutions have reciprocal agreements with each other to lend materials through the Summit borrowing system for 12-week periods, with an optional six-week renewal. A dedicated courier service delivers the materials in 5-7 business days, and alliance libraries share mailing costs.

In 2023, the WSU Libraries implemented a new platform, Rapido, for tracking and exchanging both physical books and digital copies of books, book chapters, and articles. The platform connects WSU Libraries to an additional worldwide network of libraries and has improved all borrowing and lending metrics, McManus said. It also significantly increased the overall volume of request processing. Materials circulate for 16 weeks, some for longer, and, depending on the institution, may be renewable for extended use.

If requested materials can’t be found through the Orbis Cascade Alliance or Rapido, the WSU Libraries are affiliated with a large worldwide group of institutions called OCLC, serving 17,900 member institutions in 123 countries and territories; the Greater Western Library Alliance, a nationwide library consortium of 42 research libraries; and Interlibrary Loan (ILL), a resource-sharing service of over 10,000 academic, public, and special libraries across the United States and the world.

“We’ve positioned ourselves in the best way possible within these organizations to make access to journals and research material for our patrons possible,” McManus said. “We’ve been making a huge effort to get access to journals for a long time. Libraries must find ways to work on this subscription issue.”

“Our ILL document delivery services are really impressive,” Reznowski said. “While the turnaround time is 24 hours, the articles often come sooner, and if they do come later, it is usually only in cases of lesser-known journals or titles published abroad. I have had some research where I needed entire issues, and ILL came through on those as well. I have easily requested well over 200 items in my years working at WSU, whether for my own research or to facilitate the research of others, and the fill rates and times are great.”

“Every day we receive requests from our patrons for books, electronic articles, and scans of book chapters that we don’t own or have subscriptions for,” said Amy Thielen, Summit resource-sharing specialist. “Our resource-sharing partnerships with other libraries that do have access is what allows our patrons to get what they need, even if it isn’t directly from the WSU Libraries. We regularly hear feedback from our patrons in person and via surveys regarding how much they appreciate our resource-sharing services, ILL, and Summit, and how quickly they receive their digital (electronic and scanning) requests.”

Note: To learn how ILL helped a WSU School of Music faculty member uncover works for flute and piano by women composers, please read “Where Are All the Women?” written by Sophia Tegart in this issue of Browse.