Partitioned Bradford Ranking and the Serials Problem in Academic Research Libraries

During the last ten years, the number of research‐level serials has grown rapidly, and serials costs have increased at an even faster rate. These events, coupled with other inflationary pressures and nearly static or declining budgets, forced academic research libraries to shift collections‐funding patterns significantly. As a result, they repeatedly reduced their support of monograph‐rich collections in order to pay for a series of unexpectedly large cost increases in serial‐rich collections. Despite such stopgap fund transfers, serials costs often outstripped their increased allotments. Cancellation of serial acquisitions, serials ordering moratoria, buy‐one‐cancel‐one policies, and other assorted roadblocks or holding actions frequently resulted in a qualitative decline in serial‐rich collections, yet seldom prevented the publication of new serials or the continued increases in prices. Acknowledging the notoriety of this problem among research librarians, I call it “the serials problem.”