Greetings,

Does anyone have any thoughts / experience on cancelling a print journal collection and converting entirely to an e-journal collection (by using one of our online database providers, like Proquest)?  I've started my research and have gathered a few articles that discuss this topic, but would welcome suggestions of other articles to read, or personal recommendations.

Some brief comments on our current situation:
1) We have an *active* print collection of approximately 160 subscriptions, and an *inactive* print collection of approximately 200 titles.  We are NOT planning on disposing of our print collection at any time.
2) We do not have a CCC license to cover our print collection (for reasons I can't mention here), which basically renders our print collection useless.
3) We are a for-profit company, so the Copyright Law's "Fair Use" provision does not apply to us. This means that we can't photocopy articles from our print collection.
4) We offer an article request service to our employees by using outside document delivery suppliers.
5) We have 1 library staff member (me) who handles the entire journals collection, with no resources available to hire additional staff.

We are looking at ways to save money (by cutting our print collection?) so that we can provide our users with much-sought-after online (vs. print) access to journals and articles.

What prompted us to purse this avenue was the fact that we have numerous print subscriptions in our library, but we can't make photocopies (for reasons listed above), so is it smart to even consider cancelling all of our print subscriptions to convert entirely to e-journals?

TIA for your time and recommendations.  I will summarize my findings for the List.

Julie Legeros
Senior Information & Research Librarian
SAS Library & Information Services
SAS Institute, Inc.
919-531-3324
919-677-4444 (fax)
Julie.Legeros@sas.com