Journals
The journals collection consists of a mixture of printed resources and access to a wide range of electronic journals.
Printed journals may be borrowed on the same basis as items held in the 1 day Short Loan Collection.
Selection
Responsibility for journal selection lies with faculty staff. However, Library staff, using their professional judgement, may recommend titles they feel are particularly relevant.
The following criteria should be considered for the selection of new titles:
- Quality of the publication.
- Likely ongoing relevance to courses taught at University of Portsmouth.
- Cost, including likely inflation (generally higher on journals than on book prices). Expensive titles require close scrutiny and low-cost or free titles also need to be assessed carefully, in terms of the investment of staff time in maintaining the collection.
- Whether it is vital to be able to access current information.
- Whether indexed in an abstracting or indexing service to which Library users have access.
E-journals, whether selected as individual titles or subject bundles, are selected and funded at departmental or faculty level.
Where there is a cost-benefit in purchasing cross-disciplinary e-journal bundles, the Library general fund will be appropriate, provided these can be afforded within that budget and there is general agreement that the bundle contains a preponderance of valuable titles.
All final decisions concerning new journal subscriptions are subject to the discretion of the University Librarian.
Review
Journal subscriptions will be regularly reviewed in close consultation with faculty staff in the light of ongoing relevance, quality and cost.
Library staff will survey journal usage daily, as items are reshelved. In addition, departments will be asked to review their subscriptions each June, prior to subscription renewal.
'General' titles and/or librarianship titles will be reviewed by all librarians at regular intervals.
The Library may cancel any subscription where the above methods show that usage is very low, providing the title is not part of one of the publisher bundles where cancellation will affect the deal. The Faculty Librarian will consult the appropriate department before disposing of back runs of cancelled or ceased subscriptions.
On occasion it may be necessary to cancel popular titles where journal price increases exceed library budget allocations. To avoid such situations, an appropriate balance of funding for journals and books should be maintained by the Faculty Librarian in consultation with teaching staff.
Databases
A selection of databases will be acquired to help students and staff locate journal articles, conference proceedings, reports etc. Whenever full-text databases are affordable and relevant, these will be given priority. Databases will be chosen in consultation with Faculty staff, and Faculty Library Committees have a major role in deciding what is appropriate for each Faculty. Online access will be preferred over CD-ROM in order to meet off-campus access needs.
Relevant, high quality, free databases will be added to the Library website together with their commercial counterparts.
