Libraries are not throwing away books!

After years of collecting journals in electronic form, UST Libraries now is removing the print equivalents of thousands of volumes of those journals. If you walk by containers filled with bound journals, do not worry – everything in those containers is duplicated online in the libraries’ collections.

There are significant advantages to electronic journals. They are available to the entire community 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Electronic journals can be used by multiple people at the same time and can never be lost or vandalized. The libraries are confident that the collections UST now has in electronic form are stable and permanent and from reliable providers (such as JSTOR and the American Chemical Society).

Since UST Libraries is not composed of libraries of record (these journals will continue to be available in print from larger research libraries), St. Thomas will free up shelf space in the libraries by recycling rarely used bound print journals. This project will take several months to complete.

For more information, e-mail Dan Gjelten, director, University Libraries.