SFU Library Collections Management

Faculty and students at SFU have access to over 2.5 million print and microform volumes and 2.9 million online items, including:

  • 1,350,000 print books and more than 400,000 ebooks
  • 6,000 print and 63,000 ejournal subscriptions
  • 500+ databases 
  • plus maps, data sets, slides, online images, films, DVDs and sound recordings.

Book selection and collection building is done primarily by the Liaison Librarians but coordination for the building of the collection is the responsibility of the Collections Management Division.

CONTENTS:

Budget Information

The SFU Library Materials Budget for 2012/2013 is available here. 

 The Library Materials Budgets from previous years are also available:

Library collections were reviewed to avoid a budget shortfall in 2009/10.  A proposed list of subscription cancellations was compiled and posted to the web for review.  Decisions on these titles were made in September 2009 after consultation with the SFU community. Unless otherwise noted on the final list of cancellations for 2010, the subscriptions were cancelled for calendar year 2010.

You can also look at the SFU Library Total Collection Expenditures 1999-2000 and the historical data for 1993/94-1999/2000.

Migration to Electronic-only Journals

The SFU Library now receives a significant portion of journal literature in both print and digital formats, and pays for both. The Library has been undertaking a process in consultation with faculty, to review these dual subscriptions and migrate to electronic-only journals when possible. This has been a significant Collections project since 2003. For details, please see our list of Criteria and Timeline.

Details about the financial implications of these changes iin the library materials budget are also provided:

New Serial Subscriptions

Proposals for new journal subscriptions must come to the liaison librarian from the departmental library representative, because of the ongoing commitment of the library budget for that department.  The Library's goal is to build and maintain a deep and stable collection of journals relevant to the teaching and research at SFU.  Funds for new serial subscriptions can come from a variety of sources such as cancelling another title of equivalent value, moving funds from a book budget line, drawing on a central library fund that covers acquisitions for new faculty members, or from course assessments.  Please ask your liaison librarian or Collections Management staff for more details about this.  We also provide a list of SFU Library Serials Costs for each department.

Electronic Journal Usage Statistics

Statistics for electronic journal usage from selected publishers have been tallied from 2003 onwards. The usage statistics are supplied by the publishers and measure the number of articles accessed per journal by SFU users. The usage statistics are listed below in Excel files (.xls). Please contact Collections Management if you have questions about the electronic journal usage statistics.
  • 2012 Journal usage (This file contains 3 worksheets: JR1 2012, Top 25, Top 10 per platform)

Journal usage. Sorted by title and by publisher:

Top 25 e-journals used at SFU:

Most used journal from each of the selected publishers:

 

Print Journal Usage Statistics

Reviews of print journal usage have been undertaken during selected periods beginning in March 2000. The usage statistics are listed in Excel files (.xls) on the following web page: Print Journal Usage Statistics.

Scholarly Communication

We provide information for authors, editors, and librarians to support scholarly publishing activities.

The Library is active in supporting Open Access in a variety of ways.  Please see our report Removing barriers: Open Access strategy at the SFU Library from January 2010 for details.  The Library administers a Central Open Access Fund to cover Article Processing Charges for OA journals.  In May 2010 the Library established a Scholarly Digitization Fund.

Join us in recognizing Open Access Week
October 19-23, 2009
October 18-24, 2010
October 24-30, 2011

From time to time, campus events are also planned and will be listed here. Recent events:

Please also see our Scholarly Publishing Blog.

Canadian Research Knowledge Network

The Canadian Research Knowledge Network is a national consortium of 72 Canadian universities. It is a digital library initiative established by the Canadian research library community to increase the capacity for research and innovation in Canada. Its mission is to expand the universe of digital information to Canada's academic researchers through the co-ordinated services and expertise of academic libraries. This is done primarily through national licensing of electronic information resources for the research community. It has grown out of, and continues the work of, the Canadian National Site Licensing Project. SFU is a charter member and participates in most of the licenses offered by this consortium.

SFU has now rolled out the resources licensed by CRKN as part of its CFI-funded Digital Content Infrastructure for the Human and Social Sciences project. CRKN provides information about the project, including the resources selected

Collection Allocation Task Group

The Library Collection Budget Allocation Task Group (reporting to the Senate Library Committee) was struck in 1999 to address issues of equity between departmental budget allocations.  At its June 26, 2000 meeting the Senate Library Committee recommended the acceptance of the Report of the Collection Allocation Task Group.

See also the March 2005 update to this report.

Collections Management Contact Information

Patty Gallilee,  Acting Associate University Librarian, Collections & Scholarly Communication (778.782.3263)
Megan Crouch, Collections Librarian and Liaison Librarian (mcrouch@sfu.ca ; 778.782.4962)
Sandra Wong, Electronic Resources Librarian (swongj@sfu.ca ; 778.782.4930)
Christine Manzer, Collections Management Assistant (cmcconne@sfu.ca ; 778.782.6896)
Liaison Librarians