As texts are increasingly made available in digital form, what impact has there been on library operations, and what impacts are likely in the future? Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that a largely unplanned but steady migration to electronic-only format for scholarly journals is underway. The study proposed here will focus on actual library choices to migrate collections to an electronic-only environment, both the decision whether to continue receiving new acquisitions / current issues in print format as well as the decision about maintaining local paper versions once acquired. We are interested both in documenting the extent of print cancellations, print de-accessioning, and removal to storage, as well as in understanding how such decisions are made and thereby whether librarians are likely to continue/accelerate the cancellation and removal of print. Our overall objective is to help college and university libraries understand the extent to which print is being removed from campus collections as well as how these decisions are made in a variety of environments.

We believe that the extent of digital availability is highest for journals than for other content types, and we therefore imagine devoting the bulk of this study to a detailed exploration of the migration and associated decision-making processes for journals. In addition, we are eager to compare decision-making for journals with that for reference materials, where the principal advantage of the new format is widely seen as functional. We also imagine developing sufficient data to create a baseline for the books, special collections, and, where they are held, for government documents, where any collection management choices for print collections are generally believed to be far more tentative. We hope to understand whether planning for the migration to electronic versions is being considered across these content types or whether it is more typically confined to a given type, as well as how planning for new print acquisitions is related, if at all, to planning for print space management.

This project will also seek to answer several additional questions. How do practices and policies vary by different types of institutions, based on size, resources, location, and governance/control? What characteristics of materials, such as electronic-archiving status, publisher, age, discipline, and degree of overlap across institutions, are important in decision-making? How important is cost-savings and can cost reductions be established in practice? What factors hold libraries back from removing print versions? All these questions are of significant community interest.

To complete this project, Ithaka’s research staff will focus on 15 to 20 academic institutions in the United States, selected to provide a diverse sample. We will arrange for a site visit to each institution participating in the study, to interview, individually whenever possible, an appropriate array of selectors, managers, and policy-makers, the latter both inside the library and in the campus administration as appropriate. During these visits, we will also meet with library staff to collect quantitative data relevant to our questions, as well as policy, process, and planning documents whenever possible. It is expected that each site visit will last approximately 1-1.5 days.

Based on the data collected, we will prepare a report of findings that will be submitted for publication, acknowledging the contributions of all participating institutions. A draft will be shared with each participating institution prior to publication. We expect to complete the site visits by the early summer and to submit a report for publication in the fall of 2007.

This study is being funded by JSTOR (www.jstor.org). JSTOR is committed to helping libraries create a trusted, cost-effective system for long-term preservation and access to scholarship.