Most academic and research libraries are in the midst of what may ultimately be seen as a transition of formats from print to electronic for various parts of their collections. A key factor driving this transition involves libraries' attempts to efficiently utilize their limited funds.

Eileen Fenton, Executive Director of JSTOR's Electronic-Archiving Initiative, and Roger Schonfeld, Coordinator of Research at Ithaka, initiated a study to learn more about how this transition of formats may alter libraries' operations and the associated costs, focusing specifically on periodicals. The study is part of the planning for the Electronic-Archiving Initiative, which aims to preserve digital-format scholarly journals. Also involved in the study were Ann Okerson (Yale University), Donald King (University of Pittsburgh), and Kevin Guthrie (JSTOR Board chairman).

Findings from this study were presented at the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Fall Task Force Meeting in December 2003 (http://www.cni.org/tfms/2003b.fall/index.html) and an article-length version of this study recently appeared in the January issue of D-LIB Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january04/schonfeld/01schonfeld.html).

The study will be discussed in detail during JSTOR's Participants Meeting at the ALA Annual Conference this June. A full version of this study is forthcoming in a publication from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).

Last updated on September 8, 2006