August 7, 2008
Another sign of changing times: Suzzallo’s periodicals desk to close Aug. 23
One more fixture of the 20th century library is going away. The Suzzallo periodicals service desk on the third floor will close at the end of summer quarter, Aug. 23.
“We regularly review the traffic and transactions at our service points, and traffic at the periodicals desk has just tailed off to where it doesn’t pay to keep it open anymore,” said Bill Jordan, associate dean of UW Libraries. “The use of the periodicals collection has really changed with so many electronic journals being purchased by University Libraries for use by UW students, faculty and researchers.”
At one time the periodicals area was full of students busily copying articles on the numerous copy machines available in Suzzallo. These days, there are only a few copy machines, and students are often able to download the articles they need from the comfort of their home computers.
And not just current articles, either. Many old journal articles are available online these days too, Jordan said, including back issues in some disciplines going back to the 19th century.
This doesn’t mean that the libraries have ceased purchasing print journals. “We’re still adding tens of thousands of print volumes to the collection every year,” Jordan said. “In some cases we’ll buy print plus electronic, in some cases electronic only. There’s not a formula for how those decisions are made.”
Jordan said scholars in the scientific and technical fields have embraced electronic publications enthusiastically, but those in some other fields feel differently. The library considers what people in the field want, along with matters such as price and archival access (whether the publisher will guarantee access to the electronic content in the future) when deciding what form of a journal to purchase.
Nonetheless, the general usage trend is clear. “We count the number of unbound periodicals that we have to pick up and reshelve,” Jordan said. “Back in 2000 it was over 100,000 a year. This last year it was 21,000. And questions to the desk staff are down about 50 percent.”
One of the periodicals desk staff told Jordan that many of the questions he gets these days have to do with how to find periodicals that are shelved by the Dewey Decimal system rather than the Library of Congress system that is used in the libraries generally.
Those journals, Jordan explained, were first purchased by the library many years ago, when the Dewey Decimal system was in use, and their classification was kept the same while newer journals were shelved using the Library of Congress system.
“It’s been very confusing for people. So over the past year, we’ve been working to reclassify the Dewey Decimal journals into the Library of Congress system, which should make those journals easier to find.”
The library is also just getting full use of its Sand Point shelving facility, where it will send volumes — including periodicals — that haven’t circulated in 10 years or more. The materials will still be available, but won’t be taking up daily space in the libraries.
Jordan said at least some of that space will be used for group work areas. “We’ve got a huge demand for group work areas,” he said. “We are looking at ways we can configure our space in Suzzallo, but we don’t have anything finalized. Some of it depends on funding, and some of it depends on how quickly we can move materials. We’re loath to do major reconfigurations during the academic year.”
The area behind the periodicals service desk has always been a processing area, Jordan said, and that isn’t going to change when the desk closes. Nor are any staff going to be laid off. As for patrons with questions about the periodicals, they’ll have to take them to the reference desk downstairs.
“This is just part of our attempt to keep up with user patterns,” Jordan said of the closure, “and put resources where they do the most good.”
