Academic libraries are used extensively by students, faculty, staff, and librarians for a variety of reasons. Students use the library for class assignments and papers, faculty use it for research and to stay current in their fields, staff and librarians may also use the library for research, and all patrons may use libraries for personal or professional interest. To accommodate these various uses, an academic library must provide many different resources to its patrons. One of the most important resources for current information in any field is the journal. Academic journals, or serials in general, are important for academic libraries to collect, but are also one of the most problematic formats for libraries.