Our third-party vendor that helps us track all of our journal access, print and online, tells us that through journal packages, open-access, and straight subscriptions, the Middlebury community can read 76,446 journals, including some that have ceased publication, changed title, or that we have cancelled. Just over 4071 of those are housed physically at Davis or Armstrong, either in print or microform. So, at this moment, 5.3% of the journals we can access are in ‘print’.

We currently have roughly 900 current print subscriptions in the Davis and Armstrong libraries. At this point, the only print subscriptions we have are to titles for which the publisher does not offer “perpetual access” to the online version, or perhaps there is no online version. Or perhaps we have online archival access through JSTOR or Periodicals Archive Online, but there is not reliable online access to current content.

In Davis, many of these are international titles like Revista de Occidente or Revue des Sciences humaines – there are no online versions of these. (And I don’t foresee them offering online versions anytime soon.) In Armstrong, an example is Physical Review – we have online access with our print subscription, but their idea of ‘archival access’ is a truckload of CD-ROMs that we would have to house on our servers.

We also, of course, have a number of titles for browsing like People, Time, and some similar titles in other languages taught at Middlebury. Will our users ever be satisfied with only the online versions of these?

Rebekah and I have started reviewing all of our print+online subscriptions to see whether any of them have moved to robust and reliable online access since the last time they were evaluated. We will be converting as many as possible to online-only over the next year or so.