Library and Information Science

A voting system to determine journals to subscribe to in a research institute with several divisions is propose. Given a research budget, especially under the tight financial condition of recent years, researchers find it difficult determine which journals are becoming less useful and should be removed from the list of journals to be purchased, and conversely, which journals to selecting journals to be added to the list. Easy access to journals of interest is vital for every researcher, and a compromise between divisions can never be reached satisfactory through negotiations.

In the voting system proposed in this paper, each division is given a number of ballots to cast for the selection of journals. In constrast to usual voting systems, the present method places positive vallue on each ballot and guarantee that each division can get an amount of journals proportional to the number of their ballots. Therefore, the annoying and tedious task of assigning ballots appropriately to journals is made unnecessary. This procedure was successfully employed by the library committee in the authors' institute, and the result is examined as well.