From the Library Director

In the Spring 2004 issue of this newsletter, I wrote about the Library’s budget and asked for your input concerning the list of journal subscriptions and databases being considered for cancellation (www.library.uams.edu/newsletter/lnl04/spring/cancel.htm).

We received very good input and narrowed the list down to $100,000 of database subscriptions and $54,000 of journal subscriptions to cancel (http://www.library.uams.edu/news/journal.aspx). Most of these cancellations will be in effect by January of 2005. We appreciate your help in determining how the limited resources of the Library can best be spent. Since some journals and databases are scheduled for renewal later in this fiscal year, and we do not know what the price increases will be for those products, we do not yet know if more journals will need to be canceled to balance the budget for the 2004/2005 year.

One of the databases on our original list of potential cancellations was SciFinder Scholar, the online version of Chemical Abstracts. We share a “three simultaneous users” subscription for this database with UALR, and our share of the cost is $33,050 for 2004/2005. We recently requested funding for this database from the UAMS Tobacco Research Review Committee, and we thank the Committee, Dr. Chuck Winter, and Chancellor Wilson for approving this request.

The cost for interlibrary loans has been rising as well, especially the cost of copyright fees which the Library often has to pay when requesting journal articles from libraries or other suppliers. In the past year the Library spent over $20,000 absorbing these costs. In order to help cover the cost of these articles, the Library will start charging a $5 fee per interlibrary loan request filled, effective January 1, 2005. We realize that this will be a burden, especially for those who request a lot of articles which the Library does not own, but we need to institute this fee in order to help balance the budget.

The rapidly rising cost of journals and databases is causing major problems for academic health sciences libraries and scientists throughout the world. Several initiatives have been developed to provide better access to scholarly information, a review of which was included in the Spring 2004 (www.library.uams.edu/newsletter/lnl04/spring/comm.htm) issue of this newsletter. An update on the latest developments in scholarly communication is included elsewhere in this issue (www.library.uams.edu/newsletter/lnl04/sept_oct/schpub.htm).

One of the most important recent developments in scholarly publishing concerns the NIH proposal requesting that all research articles resulting from NIH-funded research be made available for free via PubMed Central within six months of publication. NIH recently issued a call for comments on the proposal (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-04-064.html) and a web form (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/public_access/add.htm) for submitting comments to the NIH before the November 16th deadline. I encourage you to read the NIH proposal and to give the NIH input on it. While only 11-12% of the articles indexed in PubMed would be affected by this proposal, the implementation of it would be an important step forward in improving access to scholarly information.

Mary L. Ryan,
UAMS Library Director