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Library serials
to lose $32,000
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Brandon Boshell, a junior from Panguitch, searches
through a serial at the Library. Because of budget
cuts, $32,000 worth of serials will no longer be
available at the Library in the future.
ANNE McCONNELL / UNIVERSITY JOURNAL
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By TASHA WILLIAMS
UNIVERSITY JOURNAL
A cut this summer will eliminate approximately $32,000
from the Library’s serials publication collection
because of inflating prices and a stagnant budget, said
Diana Graff, dean of Library Science.
The prices for serial subscriptions have increased 9 percent
each year since 1986, according to an article in InterLink,
a newsletter published by the Library. Graff said other
Utah colleges, such as the University of Utah and Utah
State University, will cut significantly from their budgets.
The article reported the University of Utah will cut $100,000
from its serials.
Copies of about 9,000 serials are accessible through online
databases, Graff said. But losing the print copies is
undesirable when the serial isn’t available online
because it eliminates the possibility for skimming the
entire serial for research ideas, said Suzanne Larson,
director of the Honors Program, and Stan Gwin, professor
of communication.
Library administrators are asking faculty to review a
list of proposed serials to cut. Faculty in the School
of Applied Science & Technology have submitted ideas
to the Library, Graff said.
Some faculty have even suggested cutting from their book
budgets, Graff said. Each college gets a certain amount
of funding from the Library and then divvies the amount
among each of the college’s departments. This fund
is used for both books and serials, she said.
The number of serials cut will depend on which serials
are chosen. Because of the varying cost of the serials
it is hard to estimate how many subscriptions will be
lost, Graff said. She said magazines like People and Billboard
are used so frequently they only cost the Library pennies
per use, but others are expensive. The Journal of the
American Chemical Society costs $2,457 per year and had
just three uses in the past year.
“You can see we’ve got some journals here
that are costing us
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thousands of dollars and only have three
uses, five uses, etc.” Graff said.
College of Science Dean Harold Ornes said when he received
the list from the Library he petitioned the help of each
of the department chairs to decide which journals could
be eliminated and which were necessary to keep.“My
intuition tells me that sciences have heavy assignments
for the students to do papers and research,” Ornes
said. “It’s mainly through that activity, that
type of undergraduate research, where they’d use the
Library heavily.”
But cost per use isn’t the most efficient way to review
the collection, Graff said. The Journal of the American
Chemical Society has been in the SUU Library since 1941,
and as long as chemists are striving for accreditation the
use on that particular serial will increase, she said.
The journal won’t be cut, but Graff said she wants
departments to realize the potential of resources in the
Library and utilize them.
“But we want to say to them, ‘You’ve got
to get students using this,’” Graff said. “This
is kind of a wake-up call to faculty to get the usages up
if this (serial) is a standard in your field.”
Another problem with narrowing the collection is faculty
members reviewing the proposed list will always want to
eliminate another college’s serials or eliminate serials
from the general education area, Graff said.
Having print copies of the serials available is helpful
especially as research becomes more important, said Vik
Brown, associate director of the Library. As SUU gains more
graduate programs, the research materials will not be there.
“As we get more graduate programs, we’re going
to have a problem,” Brown said.
Both Larson and Gwin agreed the Interlibrary Loan at SUU
is top-notch and have both used it frequently. The downfall
to working without the print copies is students completing
their senior thesis or other rigorous papers will not be
able to trace their topics over long ranges of time unless
they use an online database, which may or may not have the
material.
Larson said, for example, the original article on the communication
topic Rhetorical Sensitivity is published in a volume of
the Journal of Communication that has been discarded from
the Library.
She said it encourages the students to plan early, but “sometimes
it’s just easier to go pull off the volume (from the
shelf).”
Steve Decker, Cedar City Library director, said the serials
budget for the public library is only $3,500. He said any
serials they choose to subscribe to come right off the book
budget, and then the book budget must be reworked.
Like the SUU Library, the public library subscribes to a
serial service and has access to Pioneer, which is an online
database with access to numerous online serials. Above that,
Decker said the library provides four newspapers and some
serials that have regional interest.
The public library looks at need and what is available electronically.
“After that we take the red pen after the lists,”
Decker said.
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Candidates:
Increase necessary
By MELISSA NIELSEN
UNIVERSITY JOURNAL
Both candidates for student body president, Kaydee Weaver of
the X Party and Jed Montgomery of the Real Party, said during
Thursday’s election debate they would have supported the
tuition increase this year if they were in position to make
that decision.
The increase is paying for things highly needed at the university;
however, they would have negotiated a lower amount to “not
rob the students as much as they are,” Weaver said.
“It would have been feasible to go with the lower amount,”
Weaver said.
The 23.5-percent tuition increase was an issue a lot of students
didn’t understand, Montgomery said.
“We owe it to our students to let them know where the
money is going and why we are using it, and why we have that
increase,” Montgomery said.
Weaver, who served as a senator this year, was asked if there
was to be an increase, where the money should go. The senators
wrote a resolution and the numbers were added to the resolution
by the administration.
If the students were against the increase Weaver said she believes
it is the duty of the president to listen to the students.
“The administration shouldn’t be in charge of student
government,” Montgomery said. “The students are
in charge of student government.”
Montgomery also said diversity is a focus in the Real Party’s
platform and isn’t easily defined.
Montgomery said SUU is a diverse campus in many different ways,
but there is still a need for improvement that is included in
diversity.
“Every single person, all 5,000 plus students, bring something
different,” Montgomery said.
One way Montgomery said he plans to strive toward the ultimate
goal of diversity throughout campus is by setting up focus groups
within student government.
“I think we can make a lot more changes on this campus
and it doesn’t have to be this same buzz word idea we
have always had,” Montgomery said.
Weaver said the X Party has a goal to increase pay wages in
Cedar City for SUU students to match the cost of living. Cedar
City Economic Development has been trying encourage businesses
for years to achieve this exact thing.
“Obviously I can’t make a company choose to increase
somebody’s wages,” Weaver said. “But I hopefully
can foster relationships with companies.”
Weaver said she will focus on helping businesses realize they
rely on students.
“The students here need Cedar City, but Cedar City needs
the students,” Weaver said.
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She said former students were surveyed by Telebird and somesaid
the reason why they didn’t return to SUU was because the
wages weren’t high enough to live in Cedar City.
“The cost of living seems to increase but our wages don’t,”
Weaver said.
Money is hard and the academic vice president candidates, Marc
Morris for the Real Party and Paul Shakespear with the X Party,
said they also would have supported the tuition increase but
they addressed other issues posing the university.
Morris said one item he believes needs improvement is the availability
of scholarships on campus and publicizing those scholarships.
Shakespear said even though nothing can be done about next year’s
tuition increase, he would like to ensure that student government
puts pressure on the administration to see academic advisers
to improve education on campus.
Shakespear also said in his platform he plans to organize advisory
councils and create an abridged version of university policy.Candidates
for C&O vice president, the Real Party’s Laura Parson
and the X Party’s Aaron Miller, agreed that loopholes
need to be created within the assembly for clubs to receive
money faster and easier.
Miller, who is currently serving as C&O vice president,
said his concern with the structure of the assembly lies within
the undefined roles of the senate and the C&O Assembly.
“Right now there is a lot of gray area,” Miller
said.
Parson said she sees nothing wrong with the structure itself
but with the training of the delegates and how they have been
informed.
Both candidates agreed that communication is the key to a successful
assembly and plan to utilize the Internet and a newsletter to
get information more accessible.
Communication must exist between clubs, members, delegates and
students, Miller said.
“I want to just be there for the clubs,” Parson
said.
Activities vice president candidate Jessie Leach with the X
Party said she is planning to open the lines of communication
ensure that students know what is going on.
Leach said one item on the platform is to reactivate an activities
hotline as well as keeping an updated Web site and all areas
of campus publicized.
SUU was pushing for ways to increase student retention and “activities
play a huge part in retention at SUU,” said Kylee Johnson,
activities vice president candidate for the Real Party.
Johnson said apartment owners would help sponsor activities
at the complexes to help get the students involved and help
them feel like they belong to a university.
With an activity like this “they are going to feel that
connection,” Johnson said.
Leach said she will bring new ideas as well as being open to
the ideas of the students.
Johnson said she has the personality traits and attitude needed
to be successful in this position.
STAB has been predominantly women in the past and a question
was posed to candidates in the debate that asked how they would
ensure a more diverse organization.
The candidates agreed that there was not a way to ensure more
male members, but they said they are certainly open for diverse
applicants.
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