RE: Seven ARL Libraries Face Major Planned or Potential Budget Cuts

["David Carlson" <dcarlson@lib.siu.edu>]

The discrepancy between Rockefeller and RIN is interesting. I 
cannot account fully for it, but I can report that the usage at 
our library is much more similar to the report from the 
Rockefeller Univ. Library (which reports that the top 10% of 
journals garnered over 85% of the hits and over 40% had no hits 
at all in '08).

As a result of several years of level funding and no other budget 
strategies, the Library at SIUC had to discontinue its 
participation in a bundled package from an important publisher 
this year. The decision prompted us to look carefully and closely 
at the usage stats. I have not looked at these numbers in several 
months but I did a quick recalculation. Over a one-year period, 
there was less than one access per month to apx. 80% of the 
titles in this bundle (total number of journals in the bundle was 
apx. 2040); further, some 55% of the titles were accessed zero or 
one time all year.

Rossner argues librarians are buying "hundreds of journals they 
do not need in order to access the journals their constituents 
actually read." The numbers from SIUC appear to support this but 
I think the conclusion is more nuanced. Since the price we paid 
for this particular package was a negotiated one based in no 
small part on our past record of print-based subscriptions one 
could argue that these 80% were simply a very generous lanyap due 
to the wonders of electronic distribution! Enjoy!! No doubt this 
is an argument publishers would suggest... and I think there is 
some truth to this.

I know what we gained from our decision to withdraw from this 
package: control over our subscriptions with this particular 
publisher. And given our budget situation, this was critically 
important. We also gained a total reduced price because we used 
our new-found control to reduce our total cost.

What did we lose? Well, most obviously, we lost access to a whole 
bunch of journals. However, with the majority of the titles 
seeing minimal or no usage, the loss was not especially damaging, 
in my opinion. Too, with an ARL ranking formula that is now 
focused on expenditures and not on 'da numbas, the loss did not 
hurt there as well. (For any ARL library, this would have been an 
important consideration just a few years ago.) What hurt most was 
the negotiated price caps. As I have reluctantly and sadly 
reported to the Provost, we are now paying less in total cost but 
much more per title had we been able to continue our 
participation.

But it is critically important to note what the publisher lost: 
reduced income. This publisher is now receiving less income from 
us. And it seems to me that this is the real tragedy of bundled 
packages as currently configured. When they become unsustainable, 
the Library has no choice but to withdraw. We must pay less so we 
must withdraw. But the publisher suffers as well because the 
total income stream is reduced. This is a lose/lose situation. 
There has to be a better way. There has to be a way where 
libraries can gain some flexibility and control in managing costs 
within the parameters of an electronic platform. Had we had such 
flexibility across platforms, our options would have increased 
and the reductions to this publisher would surely have been 
reduced.

-- David Carlson
Morris Library
SIU Carbondale



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Chris Beckett
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 10:11 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Seven ARL Libraries Face Major Planned or Potential Budget
Cuts

Its is interesting that the RLIN study cited in the RUP editorial
showed that:

"Far more importantly, these big deals give university
researchers access to unprecedented numbers of titles. And the
evidence shows that they are making good use of this: studies for
JISC and others have shown heavy use of journals to which
libraries did not formerly subscribe. A recent study for the
Research Information Network found that articles from 99% of the
titles available in a range of university libraries were
downloaded over a four-month period."

While at the same time the evidence cited in the editorial from
the Rockefeller University Library showed that:

"For one of the bundles, the top 10% of journals garner over 85%
of the hits to the bundle from users at the University. Over 40%
of the journals in the bundle had no hits at all from the
University in 2008!"

It would be interesting to understand how these two contrasting
positions can be reconciled.

Also I would be interested to know [from the librarians on this
list by direct email to me please] which publishers refuse to
sell individual subscriptions to libraries.

Many Thanks

Chris Beckett
chris@cbathome.demon.co.uk