About Jean Cardinale

Jean Cardinale is the head of the UConn Libraries' Public Programming, Marketing & Communications efforts.

Business Related Database Access Changes

After a review of our market research databases and in consultation with the UConn School of Business, we will not renew our subscription to two databases – Passport GMID and Mergent Intellect.

Passport GMID

UConn will lose access on December 31, 2023. 

Passport logo

Due to decreasing usage and growing costs, Passport GMID (Global Market Information Database), Euromonitor International’s global market research database will be cancelled as of December 31, 2023.

For similar market research databases, please refer to the Reports section of the Business Subject Guide

For more information, contact our Library’s Acquisitions and Discovery team at ermsupport@uconn.edu.

Mergent Intellect

UConn will lose access to Mergent Intellect after January 31, 2024. 

Mergent Intellect by FTSE Russell logo

Mergent Online offers the same comprehensive business information to global public and private businesses. This is supplemented by our access to S&P NetAdvantage, S&P Capital IQ, and LSEG Workspace. For a full list, see the Business Subject Guide 

Access to Mergent Archives, Mergent Bond Viewer, Mergent Investext, First Research, and Key Business Ratios will continue unchanged. 

For more information, contact our Library’s Acquisitions and Discovery team at ermsupport@uconn.edu.

Paws to Relax Returns

Image of a dog face with the text: Paws to Relax. Ease your stress! Stop by for a paw shake on Level 1 in Homer Babbidge Library! Dec. 11-15, starts at 12 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and 1 on Wednesday.

It’s that time of year when we balance your stress with some of the best doggos around! Come ease your stress all week long – December 11-15. Starts at noon on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and 1:00 on Wednesday, all on Level 1 in Homer Babbidge Library. The schedule can change so make sure you check back for any updates. Good luck on finals – you’ve got this!

Monday December 11
12pm Benny – Shih-Tzu
1pm Fireball – Golden Retriever
2pm Dodger – Golden Retriever
3pm Comet – Golden Retriever

Tuesday December 12
12pm Hunter – Shetland Sheepdog
1pm Finn – Labradoodle
2pm Willow – Foxhound
3pm Grant – Golden Retriever

Wednesday December 13
1pm Mica – Retriever Mix
2pm Finley – Yellow Lab
3pm Seneca – Yellow Lab
4pm Sheena – Hound Mix

Thursday December 14
12pm Lady Juno – Coonhound
1pm Brody – Shetland Sheepdog
2pm Millie – Border Collie
3pm Andy – Golden Retriever
4pm Cora – Bernese Mountain Dog

Friday December 15
12pm Tori – Golden Retriever
1pm Wrigley – Newfoundland
2pm Shelby – Golden Retriever

Rightsizing the library budget and supporting research. The continued success of the journal access project at UConn.

The Future of Journals strategy, which shifts us away from cost prohibitive just-in-case collection building to a budget sustainable just-in-time approach, has resulted in both large cost savings and better efficiency in providing UConn researchers articles with speed and accuracy. In fact, between January and September, the overall efficiency of the service delivery for faculty and graduate students has improved; 97% of the article retrieval requests through the new system from journals previously subscribed to (those part of the Future of Journals strategy) took less than a minute to be delivered via email, and 99% within an hour. Interlibrary loan services for all other requests (including articles outside of the project) remain within the industry standard of 11 hours. We are committed to getting researchers the articles they need.

drawing of a computer and an paper article with a hand holding a pencil
Image by Freepik

How did we get here? 

Beginning in 2020, it became clear to the UConn Library and the Provost that managing the library budget amid decreasing state aid and rising annual costs of journal subscriptions was going to require new ways of thinking. At that time the library permanent rescissions and loss of one-time collections support for that fiscal year totaled ~$2.8M.  The strategy developed in consultation with the Future of Journals Committee, composed of faculty and researchers from a variety of fields, is entering its fourth year of successfully shifting how we provide access to scholarly information, with a primary focus on getting researchers what they need easily and quickly. With the shift we met the rescissions, and annually spend between $150K-$200K on providing articles through the new service. Additionally, the budget is not affected by the annual journal subscription cost increases of 6%-10%.

Simply stated, the scholarly publishing crisis of escalating journal costs, rising exponentially over the last two and a half decades, is unsustainable. For “Big Deal” subscription bundle packages, once a way for libraries to pay for access to large amounts of packaged content, the costs have outpaced both inflation and library budgets. Additionally, many of the journals included in the bundles are used very little (very much in line with the Pareto 80/20 principle). “Big Deals” put pressure on the entire library budget and forced academic libraries, including UConn, to eliminate not only journal subscriptions and other material purchases (books, databases, etc.), but also staff, programming, and support services to meet those increases. 

One of the most significant changes to date that came out of the Future of Journals strategy, was the non-renewal of the bundled contract with Elsevier at the end of 2022. Since the start of 2023, the article processing statistics through this new system show a successful rate of delivery, with 97% arriving instantly, usually within a few seconds. Additionally, we have streamlined the process of accessing materials by combining two services into one link, called ‘Get This PDF’, for a more seamless user experience.

two logos - on left is Taylor & Francis Group and on right Wiley

According to our timeline, this January we will not be renewing contracts with the publishers Wiley and Taylor & Francis. We will  provide access at the article level to researchers from those publishers through our expedited article delivery system for faculty and graduate students and the UConn community via Interlibrary Loan. 

Academic libraries across the globe regularly cancel journals or end publisher contracts, including schools such as MIT, Rutgers, Purdue, and UNC Chapel Hill, to stay within their budgets, and our strategy has been taken note of by our peers. We have been working with other academic libraries, regional organizations, and attending conferences helping other institutions struggling with finding solutions to their own budget crises. 

It will always be a top priority for UConn Library to support the research mission of the university. The Future of Journals approach has given UConn the flexibility to be nimble in how we provide access to the library materials you need as the publishing landscape continues to change. Looking ahead our collection strategy will continue to be fine-tuned to allow us to continue to provide the materials, services, and spaces you also rely on. We build responsive and relevant collections by regularly assessing use, publishing models, usability, and monitoring and adopting new functionalities. Our collections remain reflective of the current scholarly communication environment.

We encourage you to email us your feedback and/or questions at journalsfeedback@uconn.edu.

Other Resources:

Guide to Accessing Research Materials
Get This PDF: From Citation to Full Text Article workshop recording
Subject Specialists Contact Information

Nancy Dryden retires after 42 years of service to UConn

Nancy sitting in a chair holding a doll with yellow hair and wearing a retired crown.
Nancy Dryden at retirement reception at the Stamford Library, June 2023

Nancy Dryden retired from the position of Research & Instruction Librarian at the UConn Stamford Library on June 28, 2023. 

Throughout her tenure, Nancy has been a beacon of knowledge, professionalism and dedication. Nancy joined UConn in 1981. Forty-two years later, she has had a huge positive impact on UConn Library across UConn’s Regional Campus Libraries and in collaboration with colleagues on the Storrs campus. 

Nancy first worked as a cataloger/ILL Librarian at the Jeremy Richard Library at UConn Stamford at its former space on Scofieldtown Road. The UConn Stamford Campus relocated to its current location in the heart of downtown Stamford in 1998.

Nancy has held many positions within the library from cataloger, Head of Cataloging, Head of Technical Services, Director of the Jeremy Richard Library, and the Director of the Regional Campus Libraries for 11 years, which covered Avery Point, Greater Hartford, Stamford, Torrington and Waterbury. 

Head shot of Nancy Dryden from 2007
Nancy, 2007 file photo

As the Regional Campus Libraries Director, Nancy was instrumental in coordinating the learning commons projects at each regional campus library.  Her work helped create beautiful and vibrant student-centered library spaces. At Stamford, Nancy led a project to build a wireless classroom, The Thomson eClassroom, from grant funds and a $200,000 donation from The Thomson Corporation (now Thomson-Reuters Corp). She also in collaboration with a past campus director, Dr. Michael M. Ego, had installed a WPA mural by Connecticut artist, James Daugherty in the library.  This historic WPA mural is one of seven murals painted by James Daugherty and on loan from the City of Stamford.  

Phara Bayonne, Nancy Dryden, and Jenny Gregory posing for a photo in front of a purple wall with two framed photos.
The Stamford Library staff from L-R, Phara Bayonne, Nancy Dryden, Jenny Gregory

Nancy has been an invaluable mentor and well-respected colleague of the UConn Stamford campus and her retirement is a tremendous loss to the many faculty, student, and staff she has engaged with for so many years. Her kindness, patience, and willingness to help our students has made the Jeremy Richard library a welcoming place. Her commitment and contribution to the UConn Library has significantly shaped its success. Her presence in our library will be sorely missed. 

Please join us in wishing her a well-deserved retirement filled with relaxation and new adventures! 

Written by Phara Bayonne, Director, UConn Library Stamford.

LGBTQ Pride Month

Image text - Pride month (in rainbow colored font) LGBTQIA+ resources of every stripe. Followed by five book covers illustrating some of the collection materials in literature, memoirs, wellness, history, and more

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month is celebrated each year in the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan. The Stonewall Uprising began at the Stonewall Inn, a bar located in New York City’s Greenwich Village, when patrons and neighborhood residents fought back against a violent police raid on the gay club in the early morning hours. The crowd’s fierce resistance against law enforcement quickly grew into an uprising that lasted six days and signaled the arrival of a militant and confrontational movement for the liberation of LGBTQ+ people.

The UConn Library has several great resources and activities to help you learn more of the history, challenges, and victories around LGBTQ+ issues in celebration of Pride Month.

Archives & Special Collections

Connecticut has deep roots in the movement, including here at UConn which can be found in several archival collections.

Image of Foster Gunnison, Jr. with a cigar in his mouth.
Foster Gunnison, Jr.

Foster Gunnison, Jr. Papers. In the early 1960s, Foster Gunnison, Jr., who had arrived in Hartford, Connecticut, to pursue a master’s degree at Trinity College, immersed himself in the homophile movement by working with local organizations and founding his own, the Institute for Social Ethics (ISE). A collection of his materials includes correspondences, organizational records, posters, fliers, buttons, newspaper clippings, and photographs relating to LGBTQ+ activism in the 1960s and 1970s.
Finding Aid
Digitized Materials

The UConn Gay Alliance was founded in 1967 and had their own Stonewall moment in 1971-72 when one of their dances was met by an angry crowd. There are several collections that are available for researchers interested in learning more about the movement here at UConn including:

University of Connecticut, President’s Office Records most notably presidents Homer D. Babbidge (1962–1972) and John A. DiBiaggio (1979-1985). Both contain material relating to LGBTQ+ issues on campus, such as the emergence and activities of the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s.

Alternative Press Collection (APC) includes national and international publications, ephemera, and artifacts documenting activists and organizations from the 1800s to present as well as LGBTQ+ organizing at UConn. Especially notable are materials from the Storrs Gay Coalition and the UConn Gay Alliance. The APC can best be consulted using the card catalog available in the archives, though some digitized materials can be accessed here

Daniel R. Campbell Papers. Daniel R. Campbell attended UConn in 1967-1968 and was one of the first openly gay students on campus. The collection describes Campbell’s experiences at UConn and elsewhere, and offers insight and perspective on pre-Stonewall LGBTQ+ culture on campus.  

Rainbow Center logo. Text of Rainbow Center inside a circle made of the colors of the rainbow

UConn Rainbow Center Records. Founded in 1999, the Center is dedicated to supporting the needs of the LGBTQIA+ members of the campus community. The collection documents the center’s history and activities up to the present day.

Don’t stop there! There are a wide variety of books of poetry, and children’s literature from the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, and several more great resources for research in Archives & Special Collections, with thanks to Shaine Scarminach for the compilation.

Wellness Collection

LBGTQIA Wellness titles includes books, many available electronically, related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual communities’ wellbeing, and identities. The LGBTQIA Community Wellness Guide features selected memoirs, advice, and other books by authors for the LQBTQIA + (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual) community which relate to mental health or wellness.

UConn Health Library

photo of a book display. three books on a table and a sign that identifies the books as LGBT themes.

With the assistance of a Collection Equity Award from the National Library of Medicine, a new collection of LGBTQIA+ materials is available at the Health Library which was recently highlighted in UConn Today.


Databases

LGBT Magazine Archive. Articles from journals covering LGBT interests from 1954-2015.

Independent Voices. Alternative press publications produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals and the New Left, Native peoples, antiwar activists, Black Power advocates, Latino/as, LGBT activists, right-wing extremists, and more.

LGBT Thought and Culture. Influential books, periodicals, letters, speeches, interviews, and ephemera covering LGBTQIA political and social movements in the 1900s and 2000s.more.

LGBT Life. Covers gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues including civil liberties, culture, employment, family, history, psychology, and religion.

Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940. Articles, manuscripts, images, and correspondence on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities globally; sex and sexuality; and related issues.

Libguide

Gender & Sexual Minorities (LGBTQIA) Studies Subject Guide provides tips and resources for locating books, films, journal articles, news sources, and websites for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual, and other gender and sexual minorities studies.

Exhibits

If you happen to be on campus – we have displays of published materials in the Homer Babbidge, Avery Point, and UConn Health libraries.

Paws to Relax – Spring 2023

It’s finals time which means it’s time to welcome the doggies! Mark your calendar for your favorite puppers and make it a date! This year we will also be having a little brunch on Friday, May 5 from 10-12 in the Homer Babbidge Lounge on the Plaza Level with snacks and therapy dogs to celebrate YOU and the end of finals week!

Paws to Relax image of dg with the text: May 1-4, 12-5 on Level 1. May 5, 10-12 in the HBL Staff Lounge on the Plaza. Ease your stress! Stop by for a paw shake in Homer Babbidge Library.

Monday, May 1
12:00 – Gracie (Pug)
1:00 – CC (Irish Wolfhound)
2:00 – Grant (Golden Retriever)
3:00 – Benny (Shih-Tzu)
4:00 – Millie (Spaniel Mix)

Tuesday, May 2
12:00 – Dugan (Australian Shepherd)
1:00 – Finn (Labradoodle)
2:00 – Millie (Shetland Sheepdog)
3:00 – Cora (Bernese Mountain Dog)
4:00 – Tegan (Welch Springer Spaniel)

Wednesday, May 3
12:00 – Mica (Retriever Mix)
1:00 – Sheena (Hound Mix)
2:00 – Seneca (Yellow Lab)
3:00 – Finley (Yellow Lab)
4:00 – Mazzie & Shadow (Cocker Spaniels)

Thursday, May 4
12:00 – Tori (Golden Retriever)
1:00 – Willow (Foxhound)
2:00 – Sawyer (Akita)
3:00 – Summit (English Lab)
4:00 – Andy (Golden Retriever)

Friday, May 5
Barks & Brunch at Babbidge
Celebrating YOU and the end of finals week
10am-12pm
Homer Babbidge Library Staff Lounge, Plaza

Printable flyer for posting

Celebrate Black History Month with the UConn Library

Focusing on the theme of Black Resistance, we have many ways you can join our celebration of Black History Month. There will be exhibit in multiple locations that include Homer Babbidge Library, our regional campuses, and Archives & Special Collections. We will be hosting a screening of Rosewood (1997), the cinematic retelling of a true-to-life racial pogrom that decimated a predominately African American town in Florida, and a discussion with Lizzie Robinson Jenkins, founder and president of the Real Rosewood Foundation, Inc. We are also co-sponsors of the African American Cultural Center’s Black History Month Closing Ceremony.

Image of one of the exhibition posters in the Disorder in the Night: Narratives of Black Resistance, 1723-2023 exhibition.

Exhibition – Disorder in the Night: Narratives of Black Resistance, 1723-2023
     February 1-28, 2023
     Located in multiple locations including: 
        Homer Babbidge Library Plaza
        Avery Point Campus Library
        Hartford Campus Library
        Waterbury Campus Library
        Stamford Campus Library 

Disorder in the Night explores the Black resistance in its various forms, from the period of enslavement to the present. Organized by three broad themes: everyday subversions – small acts of resistance taken in everyday life or daily activities; cultural revolution – the use of creative expression through media or the arts to create social, political, or cultural change; and collective action – the power of people and the use of cooperative organizing or mass mobilization throughout history. 
_______________

Image of two of the actors in the film Rosewood

Event – Film Screening – Rosewood (1997)
This blockbuster film is the cinematic retelling of the true-life destruction of an African American community in 1923. It Jim Crow-era violence and the Black radical tradition of resistance.
      February 21, 6:00-8:30pm
      Homer Babbidge Library
      Class of 1947 & Virtual
      Free! Registration required
_______________

Event – Discussion: Rosewood Film & History
with Mrs. Lizzie Robinson Jenkins, Founder & President of the Real Rosewood Foundation, Inc. and Rosewood descendant.
      February 22, 6:00-7:30pm
      Virtual only
      Free! Registration required 
_______________

Image of Dr. Rik Stevenson, courtesy of the University of Florida's African American Studies
Dr. Rik Stevenson, courtesy of the University of Florida’s African American Studies

Event – Black History Month Closing Ceremony
We are a proud co-sponsor of African American Cultural Center’s Black History Month Closing Ceremony with a keynote address by Dr. Rik Stevenson, a professor of African American Studies at the University of Florida. Dr. Stevenson’s research examines Black resistance in the Middle Passage.
      February 27, 6:00pm
      Student Union Ballroom
_______________ 

Resources to learn more 
including research guides and featured collections on our website.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

In 2005, 60 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, the United Nations designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and to promote Holocaust education to help prevent future genocides and create a safer future. Following is a list of resources available to the UConn community to honor the day through education.

You can also check out the one credit course UConn is running starting March 6 – “Why the Jews? Confronting Antisemitism.”

Thanks to Zach Claybaugh, Betsy Pittman, and Graham Stinnett for gathering the following list. We welcome you to reach out if you would like to learn more.

Exhibition

Kristallnacht: Art installation from the Collection of Irena Urdang deTour

Image of Irena (Ehrich vel Slusny) Rudang de Tour from her obituary page.
Irena (Ehrich vel Slusny) Urdang de Tour

Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party’s Sturmbtelilung (SA) and Schutstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9-10 November 1938. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Historically viewed as a prelude to the Final Solution, the month of November marks the anniversary of this dark period of history and genocide.  This art installation has been created by Connecticut resident and Holocaust survivor, Irena Urdang deTour.   

The exhibit has been extended through January 2023 in memory of Ms. DeTour who died in December 2022 at the age of 98. The exhibtion can be accessed through Archives & Special Collections.

Archival Collections

Connecticut Soldiers Collection, Carl Viggiani Papers. arl Viggiani, Emeritus Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Wesleyan University, was a member of a “Spearhead Military Government Team” attached to the 83rd Infantry Division during World War II.As the 83rd moved down toward the Elbe in April 1945, Viggiani’s unit took over a Nazi official’s home in Braunschweig for a night.

Series VII: Nuremberg Trials from the Thomas J. Dodd Papers. The Thomas J. Dodd Papers consists primarily of material from Dodd’s Senate years (1959-1971) and the Nuremberg war crimes trial before the International Military Tribunal from 1945-1946.

Dedication of the Dodd Research Center by Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel was an Auschwitz survivor and human rights activist. Author of Night, Wiesel devoted his life to educating the world about the Holocaust. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Other Resources

Database

Human Rights Online, Holocaust (1933-1945)

Documentary Film

Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah. New York: IFC Films, 1985.

Reference Work

Photo of the cover of the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945 from the United States Holocause Memorial Musem website.

Laqueur, Walter, and Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, eds. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.

Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009.

Monographs

Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperPerennial, 1993.

Browning, Christopher R. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Book cover of 'Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust by Evgeny Finkel

Finkel, Evgeny. Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival During the Holocaust. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.

Horwitz, Gordon J. Ghettostadt: Łódź and the Making of a Nazi City. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008.

Kaplan, Marion A. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Kay, Alex J. Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021.

Waxman, Zoë. Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Academic Journals

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History

The Journal of Holocaust Research

Fiction

Borowski, Tadeusz. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. New York: Penguin, 1967.

Kertész, Imre. Fateless. Translated by Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992.

Schwarz-Bart, André. The Last of the Just. Translated by Stephen D. Becker. New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1960.

Book Cover of Night by Elie Wiesel

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.

Memoir

Frank, Anne. The Diary of Anne Frank. Translated by Arnold Pomerans, B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, and Susan Massotty. The revised critical edition. New York: Doubleday, 2003.

Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

The Whitney House – a Brief History

On Friday, January 20, one of the oldest structures on the UConn campus suffered extensive damage from a fire. Thankfully the structure was unoccupied and no one was hurt but it is unknown if the fire has damaged the structure beyond repair.

Image of the fire at Whitney House on January 20, 2023.
Fire at Whitney House, January 20, 2023.

Known as the Whitney House, or the International House, it was built between 1802 and 1807 by John Gilbert, Jr., of Mansfield, Connecticut, one of the original owners of the property. The building and the property passed on to Gilbert’s sons, and then his grandsons, and in 1867 it was then sold to Augustus Storrs.

Storrs had a large family farm nearby and was, at that time, a businessman in New York City, so he rented the house to Mrs. Minerva Whitney, widow of Edwin Whitney, who established and was director of a school for orphans near the house. It is thought that after Mr. Whitney’s death Augustus Storrs offered the home to Mrs. Whitney to purchase.

Picture of the Whitney House, 1900 from the Archives & Special Collections.
Whitney House, 1900

In 1881 Augustus Storrs and his brother Charles offered to the State of Connecticut the property and funding for what was then used to establish the Storrs Agricultural School, later known as the University of Connecticut.

At the time of Edwin Whitney’s death Mrs. Whitney was pregnant with their daughter, whom she named Edwina. In 1900 Edwina Whitney became the Connecticut Agricultural College’s Librarian, a position she held until 1934. She was also an instructor of German. You can read more about Edwina Whitney here.

Picture of the Whitney House, 1900 from the Archives & Special Collections.
Whitney House, 1999

In the late 1800s Minerva Whitney used the house as the local post office. She sold the house to the college in 1918 and it was used to house faculty members. In 1964 it was refurbished and made available as a center for foreign students, thereby known as the International House.

Post written by Laura Smith, Archivist

Update on Future of Journal Subscriptions for UConn Library – January 2023

UConn Library has been shifting over the past ten years from just-in-case collection development practices to a budget sustainable just-in-time approach for providing access to scholarly information. Journals have always required a significant source of funding, and as journal costs rose exponentially over the last two and a half decades, libraries paid for “Big Deal” journal subscription bundles with flat or reduced library budgets. This meant cutting the other materials and services that libraries provide. “Big Deal” packages were once a way for libraries to pay for access to large amounts of content at reduced rates, but the increases in costs for packages have far outpaced both inflation and library budgets. Additionally, many of the bundled journals are used very little. “Big Deals” have put pressure on the entire library budget and forced academic libraries to eliminate staff, programming, and support services. This is unsustainable.

Every research library regularly cancels journals or ends publisher contracts, including schools such as MIT, Purdue, and UNC Chapel Hill, to stay within their budgets. In the Fall of 2020, Dean Langley and Provost Lejuez convened the Future of Journals Committee, including administrators, faculty, and staff to assess journal subscriptions at UConn with an eye on strategies that would yield a viable long-term solution. The committee-approved pilot project was successful and we began the first phase of Future of Journals in 2021. We are in year three of a six-year implementation schedule. Each year different publisher contracts are not renewed, and we purchase articles on demand, quickly and conveniently, with access paths only slightly different than before. Because publishers limit how we provide articles, you may have to alter how you search and request materials. We have created a guide to help you learn the most efficient methods.

Consistent with the Future of Journal timeline, we did not renew our bundled contract with Elsevier, which expired at the end of 2022. What does this mean for your access to journal articles found in Elsevier and other subscriptions that have not been renewed? Using past use data and forecasting tools we predict that 85% of articles most frequently requested will be available immediately. If an article is not, it can be requested by any member of the UConn community via Interlibrary Loan. Faculty and graduate students have expedited access to articles from a subset of publishers. Depending on where the article comes from, most items will be delivered within five minutes (or less) to an hour. The Library will annually review article usage statistics and other criteria to assess the most cost effective models for access.

We can now manage the Library budget without the burden of the unsustainable increasing costs of journal subscriptions and we’ve been fielding questions and giving presentations to other academic libraries interested in our implementation of this expedited process. It continues to be a top priority for UConn Library to support the research mission of the University. The Future of Journals approach has given UConn the flexibility to be nimble in how we provide access to the library materials you need as the publishing landscape continues to change.

 You can learn more about the Future of Journals at https://lib.uconn.edu/research/collections/future-of-journals/ and we encourage you to email us your feedback and/or questions at journalsfeedback@uconn.edu.