flourest. lights should eventually go when it is affordable, more access to journals would be ideal
There’s sadly not much we can do about fluorescent lights right now, as they are the most feasible, economical, and sustainable solution right now for lighting. But did you see this article about new LED light technology? Maybe someday!
In terms of journals, we try very hard to provide students with the widest range of journals we can, but like all libraries we are limited by the vast range of publications and interests and the high cost of journals. As a result, we focus our efforts on journals that are central to the curriculum and use interlibrary loan to provide other articles. If there is a specific journal that you think we really need, let us know by leaving a comment, and we’ll investigate whether it is a possibility.
Right now, libraries across the country are dealing with the problem of high and rapidly increasing annual prices for journals and magazines. In fact, Harvard recently released a letter to their faculty explaining why the serials situation is untenable and what faculty could do about it.
Just as an example in the local context, in 2011, University of Puget Sound paid over $650,000 to provide access to articles in scholarly journals!
To help visualize what that means, here are a couple of examples of journals we subscribe to, with the cost of an annual subscription for each journal portrayed in equivalent buying power:
- Angewandte chemie = 3 Vespa scooters
- Social science: Journal of organizational behavior = 3 iPad 2’s
- English studies = 14 Kindles