Continuing a commitment to careful and strategic stewardship of university resources, while respecting necessary budget reductions, several changes have been made in the electronic resources maintained by the IUP Libraries.
Library faculty and staff, with input from faculty representatives across all disciplines, worked during the fall semester to develop a set of recommendations for the university's electronic resources, including consolidation and/or discontinuation of select subscriptions.
"Decisions made were data-driven, using a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the usage and cost of materials, employing the professional expertise of library faculty and departmental faculty input about program and curriculum needs," Dean of Libraries Erik Nordberg said.
Three additional principals were key to the recommendations for the digital collections:
-
Continue to cover all core disciplines across colleges
-
Remain in alignment with the university's academic mission
-
Meet critical needs of the university and departments, including accreditation requirements.
"Our overarching goal is to protect core library resources, and we have met that goal," he said. "We are confident that even though we have made some hard choices for change, that we have preserved the quality and breadth of information resources we provide to support student and faculty success."
"Our focus now is to inform library users about these changes and the discovery tools that they can use to find information through offerings that may be new to them, including through alternative subscriptions that are very close substitutes to the ones they have used for prior work," Nordberg said.
Information on the changes to electronic resources will be offered on the IUP Libraries website as they go into effect.
In addition, Nordberg and Collection Development Librarian Emily Szitas will offer a presentation about changes to IUP's digital assets during IUP's Tech Day on January 15 during the 1:00 session. Tech Day, sponsored by the IUP College of Education and Communications, is free and open to all.
"Access and Organization of IUP Libraries Web Page: Changes in Information Retrieval" will be held in Stouffer G17. This presentation will highlight changes in the subscription databases and provide techniques for locating and searching alternative electronic resources in specific subject disciplines.
Persons with questions about how the changes may impact their work, or who find that a familiar resource is no longer available, should contact their subject bibliographer.
Nordberg also welcomes feedback from the campus community concerning all aspects of the IUP Libraries' collections, services, and facilities. He can be reached via email at erik.nordberg@iup.edu or in the library administrative offices on the second floor of Stapleton Library.