Keeping Literary Magazines in Libraries: Susan Thomas Has a Suggestion

This is the year of the flip, the final shift in university libraries around the country to a higher proportion of electronic database subcriptions than print subscriptions. Throughout the country, public and academic librarians are eliminating periodials from shelves, partly to free up shelf and storage space, but mostly because of a budget squeeze. Scientific journals are expensive (subscriptions can run a hundred dollars or more). As a sort of collatoral damage, literary publications, which are much less expensive and in some cases impossible to duplicate in digital form, are disappearing, too.

This latest development in book culture was the focus of the September 13 NBCC panel, "Literary Magazines Go Electronic: Now Where's the Print Edition in the Library," cosponsored by Library Journal and moderated by LJ book review editor and NBCC board member Barbara Hoffert, who noted, "The fate of literary magazines may hang in the balance." The panelists included Karen Gisonny, head of periodicals at the New York Public Library; Brigid Hughes, editor of A Public Space; Jeffrey Lependorf, executive director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (formerly CCLM); author D.T. Max,NBCC member and Nona Balakian award winner Scott McLemee of Insidehighered.com, Kevin Prufer, NBCC board member, poet, and editor of Pleiades, and Susan Thomas, a librarian at the Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY.

Prufer inspired the panel when, as described in his post on Critical Mass, he dropped by the library at the University of Central Missouri to catch up on the latest poetry reviews and discovered that quarterlies like the Kenyon Review, Antioch Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and others were no longer on the shelves. The librarian directed him to the electronic database. But digital format, he noted, cannot duplicate publications like the Virginia Quarterly Review, which are carefully curated from graphics and special paper to fiction by authors like Nadine Gordimer, who did not sell electronic rights to the story the VQR published recently.

Library subscriptions are a substantial portion of the income for some literary magazines, Lependorf pointed out. Newsstand sales to bookstores are in danger right now, as well, he added, because a major distributor went out of business recently. And one commonly used database for literary magazines is intended for archiving, not for current publications; the newest versions are three years old.

Susan Thomas (pictured above) offered a solution for academic libraries: Lobby the librarians. And lobby the provost, the dean of humanities, the vice president, the president. Ask them to keep literary magazines and small press publications on the shelves. "Reading a literary magazine is such a relief after hours at the computer screen," she said. "My job is to encourage young people to become lifelong learners. They lose interest in reading on the computer. If I can put an exciting literary magazine in their hands, it can be important." This approach can also work for public libraries.

That was not the only good news of the evening. Brigid Hughes said that she had no problem convincing librarians in college and university with MFA programs to subscribe to A Public Space. (The publication also has a complementary website.)

Karen Gisonny of the New York Public Library has maintained a strong periodicals collection; the NYPL also houses the print archives of the collected thousands of publications of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and CCLM.

Prufer had the last word of the evening. After his protest to the librarian at the University of Central Missouri, he said, the subscriptions to the quarterlies he loved were restored.