Another step into the digital world for CERN Library
Following a recommendation from the Scientific Information Policy Board, the Library will adapt its acquisitions policy so that it can start to profit from the advantages of subscribing to journals in electronic format only, starting from January 2008. This new policy will not affect magazine-style journals, annuals and obviously the journals that are not yet available in electronic format. However, this is a major change. For, who today could imagine consulting the library holdings using an old style card catalogue? Even the days of the famous preprint display are unknown to many of the current CERN staff and users. More than a decade after the birth of web-based scientific journals, publishers now offer very reliable online versions.
The financial savings implied by this change of policy will reduce the number of title cancellations needed to match the decrease in the Library budget, and the policy will therefore help maintain a good overall level of information resources.
Such a move is also being made for Science, Technology and Medical journals in other major scientific libraries, such as Cornell and Oxford. And so it seems the time is ripe for the CERN Library to carry its journal subscriptions with a confident step into the digital world.
It happens at an exciting time as publishers are expected to start responding to the emerging needs of eScience: a new era where articles will include links to code and data that can no longer be represented in the traditional paper form.