Investigation into the key factors influencing the decision to subscribe to print and/or electronic Education serials in New Zealand's publicly funded tertiary institutions

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate which factors influence the decision serial acquisition librarians make when deciding whether to subscribe to print and/or electronic education serials. Five major factors were found which continually re-occur in the literature. These were: cost, access, prestige, storage (of print serials) or archiving (of electronic serials) and timeliness of delivery. The majority of the literature available on this topic is predominantly based on North American case studies or situations meaning there is little or no relevant data for New Zealand. It was decided to survey all of New Zealand's publicly funded tertiary institutions (i.e. the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education), as these are a very separate group under the umbrella of New Zealand's tertiary institutes. All 30 of these institutions were sent a copy of a survey addressed to the serials acquisition librarian. The survey attempted to find out if New Zealand tertiary serial acquisition librarians agreed that the five factors (listed above) were major factors in their decision making processes. Or if they weren't, what other factors did they consider to be important. It was found that New Zealand tertiary serials acquisition librarians consider all of the factors from the literature (access, cost, prestige, archiving, storage and timeliness of delivery) important. However their order of importance is dependent on the size of the institution, though cost is always the most important factor (in both the literature and for all the New Zealand tertiary institutions regardless of size).