Ordering Journals:
Placing an order for a journal subscription is a more serious, long-term undertaking than placing an order for a book. Average costs for journals rise by 7 - 10% each year. We order digital subscriptions if possible, however some journals from small publishers are only available in print.
Departments and programs are not allocated funds for journals. Rather, there is one fund for all journal subscriptions. Faculty make petition for new subscriptions through their departments or programs, in an effort to coordinate their journal offerings for the good of their majors. We ask that department and program faculty work together to choose a core set of journal subscriptions essential to their majors and to rely on full-text databases, indexing/abstracting in databases and e-journal web sites, and funded document delivery to retrieve particular articles from other good but unessential journals.
The library policy sets few restrictions on department/program choices for subscriptions but the three restrictions that follow are set in stone. Note that although all three must be present before subscription takes place, they are noted here in order of perceived importance:
(a) the journal has to be readable and understandable by an intelligent undergraduate
(b) the journal has to be indexed in one of the many indexing formats found in the library
(c) the journal has to be reasonable in cost
Discuss journal requests first with your chair/program coordinator and fellow faculty, then with Joyce Kebert, serials librarian (x3821, jmkebert@gcc.edu).