Dear all:

I have recently had my budget for the binding of periodicals slashed
from $3500 to $500 p/yr.  This may only be a temporary situation but I
have to come up with justification for why we should continue to bind,
which has forced me to re-evaluate the value of binding, now that we
depend on digital access to periodicals more and more, and on print less
and less.  We have moved a number of our key titles to an electronic
subscription through either Ovid or ECO which guarantees archival access
to all the issues we have subscribed to.  And we have ceased our print
subscriptions to them, when we could, and certainly stopped binding
them.

We have also begun to box all of our remaining loose journals that we
subscribe to, which helps to organize and protect them at about one
fifth the cost of binding.  Its not as good as binding, but it is better
than just leaving the issues loose on the stacks.  We could stop binding
altogether and simply box all print titles we receive and increase our
reliance on electronic journals.

I am interested to know what everyone else is doing with binding of
periodicals in this age of digitalization.  Is binding becoming a thing
of the past?

I am looking forward to all of your thinking on this matter.

Mark

Mark Ferguson

Periodicals Librarian, Mahoney Library

College of Saint Elizabeth, 2 Convent Road, Morristown, NJ 07960