Planning serials cancellations and cooperative collection development in the health sciences: methodology and background information.

In an era of steady-state budgets many research and academic libraries must cancel a significant number of current serials to maintain acquisitions of monographs. Thus paper reviews several techniques that have been used or that are of potential use in a rational selection of titles for cancellation. The context of the proposed methodology involves a network of libraries rather than an individual library. The methodology was tested with specific health sciences serial titles held by University of California libraries and resource libraries in NLM Region XI. As a test for the proposed methodology, background data were collected on 600 current foreign language serial titles included in SERLINE and held by at least one of the libraries in the networks of interest. Price, major secondary service coverage with productivity/impact factors, extent of holdings, and average number of recorded circulations per year in several of the libraries were recorded for each title. With the use of several different rules, estimates were made of the subscription savings that might be realized. It seems feasible to extend the same methodology to other groups of serial titles.