Document Type
Article
Publication Title
College & Research Libraries
Publication Date
2025
Keywords
academic libraries, faculty, information access, serials, scholarly communication, acquisitions, assessment, collection development, publishing
Abstract
This study explores how faculty across disciplines access and share scholarly serial content and what expectations they have for immediacy. The authors conducted twenty-five in-depth, semi-structured interviews with faculty of various ranks representing all Illinois State University (ISU) colleges. The findings, presented in the words of participants and triangulated with data from local sources, suggest that faculty use a variety of context-specific mechanisms to access and share serial literature. Participants discuss how they use library services such as databases, subscriptions, interlibrary loan, and document delivery, coupled with academic social networks, disciplinary repositories, author websites, and other publicly available sources to obtain the full text of articles along with their manifold considerations for sharing and requesting content. The urgency with which faculty need to gain access to scholarly literature is dependent on intersecting elements of discipline, current projects, how the resource will be used, the perceived competitiveness of the field, career stage, and personal practices. The findings reiterate that scholarly literature remains integral to the research and teaching of faculty even as needs and practices for accessing and sharing it grow more individualized and distributed.
Funding Source
This research benefitted from a University Research Grant funded by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies at Illinois State University.
Recommended Citation
Scott, Rachel Elizabeth; Shelley, Anne; Buckley, Chad E.; Thayer-Styes, Cassie; and Murphy, Julie A., ""I’ll Wait Zero Seconds": Faculty Perspectives on Serials Access, Sharing, and Immediacy" (2025). Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library. 195.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/fpml/195
Comments
This is the accepted (post-peer review) version of a manuscript which has been accepted for publication in College & Research Libraries (accepted: September 21, 2023; expected publication January 2025).