Organization Monkey

i’m sitting here at my desk popping wasabi peas and trying to talk myself off the ledge. here’s the thing. as the serials & electronic resources librarian it’s up to me to tell my university which print journals they can get rid of, journals that cost a LOT of money and are vital to current scholarship. if we have stable access to the electronic version it is redundant to retain a print subscription, especially when we know our users prefer the electronic version. if we have access in perpetuity (i.e., FOREVER) to the electronic version, why retain the old print? we don’t need the print version because we have access to the electronic version, and all those print volumes are taking up space. this is a perfectly logical thought process. librarians all over the world have followed this thought process, discarding print volumes of journals in favor of perpetual electronic access. so why is it that lately i’ve been mistrusting this thought process? it’s because i’ve been asking our journal vendors to provide me with titles and specific volumes/years that we should have perpetual access to. many of them have been slow to produce the list of titles/holdings, and i’ve returned many of those lists with added titles they’ve missed. that makes me nervous. what happens when it comes time to cash in that access? will the lists of titles and holdings we’re making now be honored later?

talk me down, people. how are you handling all of this at your own universities?