American Chemical Society Division of Chemical   Information [Conference Report]

  	
  	
  	
  


	Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship  	Fall 1997  


	DOI:10.5062/F4BV7DMH


    

Conference Reports
    American Chemical Society
 Division of Chemical Education
  Notes from the Fall Meeting, September 1997, Las Vegas, Nevada
    Gayle S. Baker
  University Libraries
  University of Tennessee, Knoxville    

"Confronting the Library Funding Crisis of the '90s at Undergraduate Institutions"  was the title of one of the symposia which met September 7-8, 1997 in Las Vegas. There were  several interesting papers:
	
Academic chemistry serial collections: An overview of national trends, 1992-1994
  Tina E. Chrzastowski, University of Illinois.  
	The author analyzed subscription data, provided by Faxon, for domestic publications  subscribed to by 10 ARL libraries. She concluded that all non-core domestic titles are  at risk for cancellation and that libraries are choosing to buy the same core titles.    


	
Journal usage studies: Essential for collection management
 Howard M. Dess, Rutgers  University.  
	The author presented a technique to identify journal use using the SciSearch  database on the STN online system. He selected publications by Rutgers faculty for 1992-1994.  Then he used the SmartSelect function (an STN feature) to extract data on cited journal  titles. He then sorted them in rank order and produced a list of the most cited journals.  The cost was moderate in comparison to the effort that it would take to perform this manually.    


	
Economics of scientific publishing
 L. R. Garson, American Chemical Society Publications  
	In this paper, the author reviewed the characteristics of Science/Technology/Medical  publications. Among the reasons for subscriptions price increases are the increasing  number of papers being published and papers' increasing length. Despite the  improvements in productivity, the costs are proportional to the amount published. He  predicted that the costs for print publications will rise as print runs decline in  the transition from print to electronic publishing. However, electronic publishing will  not be significantly less expensive, having 80+% of the print costs. Mr. Garson predicted  "just-in-time" rather than "just-in-case" purchases of articles and publications.    


	
Print, electronic, and consortial access: Challenges and directions
 Carol A. Drum,  University of Florida et al.  
	The author focused mainly on access to electronic information  at the University of Florida. The university has used consortial agreements, both state-wide  and among the state research institutions, to provide more access to electronic information.  Sometimes state laws have hampered negotiations on license agreements. Library staff are training  and retraining for new technologies. Users are more mobile and may not be on campus. The  campus computing infrastructure has continual upgrading of equipment.