FY22 Educational Resources Assessment

The University Libraries manage the educational resources budget for our institution. While the amount varies slightly from year to year and the availability of year end funds, it is generally around $3.7M. Academic libraries engage in a continuous cycle of assessing resources as a matter of professional practice. Since FY19, the Libraries have judiciously reduced expenditures for educational resources by cancelling databases with extremely low usage statistics, canceling print journals that we already had access to in electronic formats, cancelling journals that were duplicated in other database packages that we subscribe to, and by negotiating reductions in consortia fees and vendor costs. Some of our decisions and actions, like deleting duplicates, were driven by the consolidation of two existing academic libraries. The savings gained by these stewardship efforts were then used to offset subscription inflation costs of approximately 5% per year and when possible, the savings were also used to subscribe to other resources that faculty told us they needed for teaching and research. 

These reductions include but are not limited to:

During FY20, we saved $68,540 by canceling the print version of some journals and keeping only the electronic version. We also saved $141,029 by working with vendors and with the GALILEO consortium to reduce costs and service fees. 

Fiscal Year 2021

Funding in FY22 will decrease from ~$3.7M to $3.4M and to achieve this budget reduction while preserving access to the University's most important, high-use educational resources, the University Libraries will "break up" and renegotiate eleven journal packages. By renegotiating these packages, the Libraries will continue to subscribe to individual journals that receive high use, are of reasonable cost, and that the departmental faculty tell us are most important for teaching, learning, and research.

The decision to renegotiate these packages follows as the result of a thorough review process conducted by library faculty during summer 2021. Based on this review, the library faculty have identified an extensive list of resources to be renewed for FY22. The library faculty also identified  eleven journal packages to review.  

From mid-September through October 29th, the Libraries are asking for each department's input on which journals to renew from these eleven packages, and which can be discontinued. For more information about this process and how to work with you department's Library Liaisons to provide feedback, see the Departmental Review page.