Library Update

For those of you who haven't heard yet, the WSU Libraries are embarking on some substantial journal cuts and cancellations. Your librarians are already hard at work looking at use statistics, re-evaluating the cost and importance of preserving and archiving information, discussing whether or not we can cancel a "big ticket" database or two to make the journal cuts less severe, and doing our darnedest to make the best decisions possible.

Making smart cancellation decisions is important, but getting rid of parts of this collection (a collection we've all worked hard to build in support of WSU's research and education missions) runs counter to librarian values and instincts - most of us got into this profession because we want to increase access to and use of good information. Cutting off access to information is, in times like these, necessary, but highly painful.

However, one very heartening thing that I can do here is to highlight some other access options. Here are two very good ones for journal articles:

• ILLiad, our interlibrary loan service, allows you to request articles and papers that aren't available in the WSU collections. You can use ILLiad either by using the Illiad web page or through the "Find it@WSU" button that you see next to the articles listed in most of our library databases.
• Also, this year we are piloting a new service called ArticleReach that will allow you to get articles for no fee if they are available from one of our ArticleReach partners. More information about this is available here.