The Founders Memorial Library might have to reduce seating in the first-floor periodical section next academic year to expand shelving for the growing section.

Library Director Steve Marquardt said problems with the retention and mutilation of journals were discussed at the recent Library Advisory Committee meeting.

To deal with space constraints, Marquardt said the library could put journals on microfilm, microfiche or on CD-ROM disks, which are identical to CDs with music recorded on them except information is stored.

Marquardt said he would like to see the more popular journals “putting a whole year’s worth of journals on compact disk.” He said this might happen by the mid-1990s.

Advantages of the CD-ROM system include a high storage density and “high powered access points,” allowing information to be found by using only a few words.

The library has CD-ROM computers, but they only list a “biographical index of journal citations” and a brief description of what the artical is about, said Marquardt.

“What I hope to see in the future is the whole text available on the disk,” he said.

Currently, the library has ordered microfiche for 4 percent of its periodicals, said Marquardt. “The typicl academic library has between 8 and 12 percent of their journals on microfilm,” he said.

Putting more periodicals on microfilm or microfiche will help the space crunch and also reduce mutilation and theft of periodicals.

The committee also plans on developing a retention policy defining how long the library should keep journals, and how they should be stored if they are kept, he said.