The Frohring Library belongs to the whole JCU community and sometimes provides opportunities for creative uses of its spaces.
There's a lot going on at the end of the semester!
A shooting project took place in the Aurelian Wing with Prof. Serafino Amato and his students. And here you can see the beautiful photo that was taken in the occasion.
On April 19, at 7 pm, the Upper Reading Room hosted Guardami, an exhibit curated by the students of the Curating Museums and Galleries course taught by Prof. Ilaria Gianni.
On April 26, at 9 pm, the room will be used again for yet another project. A student from the Expanded Cinema class taught by Prof. Marco Ferrari will install her final project.
We hope that everyone has the opportunity to create their own library space, ensuring at the same time that sufficient study space remains available for the students that need a "traditional" library.
Forgive us if your favorite spot is temporarily unavailable, and enjoy the creativity of your peers!
The Library Journal published its usual annual survey on periodical prices. Nothing new, unfortunately. As in the last 24 years, "Flat budgets, price increases, and a reliance on status journals for tenure and promotion keep familiar pressures on the serials marketplace." This well known, outstanding, and even growing problem is the foundation for the librarians' passionate support to the open access movement.
But let's have a closer look.
The table shows subscription costs by subject for the titles indexed on Scopus (the most commonly held in academic libraries).
AVG # OF
TITLES 2016-18
The average annual cost per title for 2018 is over $1400.00.
Luckily enough, JCU is a liberal arts college, and the Library only needs to pay subscriptions for journals in the Arts ($655), Business and Economics ($1,411), History ($448), Language and Literature ($443), Law ($618), Philosophy and Religion ($441), Political Science ($810), Psychology ($943), Social Sciences ($928), and Sociology ($932).
These rather unbelievable amounts go all in the hands of the publishers. No fraction is shared with the authors, who need to publish to progress in their careers.
The report shows a direct correlation between the cost of the journals and the impact indicators used for tenure decisions (Impact Factor, Eigenfactor). The higher the impact, the higher the cost. But tiny differences in the metrics correspond to very big differences in price bands.
Who is going to break this spiral?