Friday, July 12, 2002, 2:19:16 PM, you wrote:
RA> At my institution our approach is similar to yours, though we will also
RA> cancel print if our online access comes directly from the publisher.  Thus,
RA> we will cancel print in favor of online for Elsevier, Wiley and Springer
RA> journals, but not for those journals and magazines that we currently only
RA> get via ProQuest or EBSCO packages.  But our desire is to offer as much
RA> content online as we can.  Our philosophy can be pretty much summed up this
RA> way: All things being equal, online journals are always better than print.
RA> But all things are never equal, so we proceed with care and weigh the pros
RA> and cons of every print/online decision.

At Boise State we're in a similar situation.  We have a policy on
"Duplication of Formats", quoted below from a section of:
http://library.boisestate.edu/colldev/cdp/General.htm, our Collection
Development Policy.

  "DUPLICATION OF FORMATS

  In general the Library will not purchase duplicate formats of the same
  item but each resource will be evaluated individually. When an item is
  available in both print and non-print formats, the following selection
  criteria will be considered in making a decision on what format to purchase:

     cost;
     how an item will be used;
     potential user population;
     ease of access;
     space requirements; and
     preservation considerations.

  The Library will consider purchasing a duplicate format of a resource only
  when one or more of the following criteria are met:

  the resource has significant historical value;
  one format is unstable; or
  a cost benefit for purchasing multiple formats exists"

Checking our http://tdnet.boisestate.edu will let you see that there
are a number of titles that have converted from print to online, and
that we still have print subscriptions to titles that are in
aggregator databases.  Although the policy above, written in 2000,
doesn't explicitly state that we give preference to electronic, we do
in almost all cases.  I imagine the policy will be revised later this
year.

cheers

dan

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Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan@RiverOfData.com 208-283-7711
3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115 USA
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