ECU Libraries Journal Subscription Changes: Home

Dear ECU Community,

The ECU Libraries, Joyner and Laupus, each contribute to a shared Virtual Library materials budget for e-journals, databases, and other online resources that are used campus-wide. The Virtual Library budget is used for so-called Big Deals: arrangements with publishers whereby selected subscription e-journal titles are bundled with additional titles (sometimes all of the publishers’ e-journal offerings), and licensed as a package. The ECU Libraries licenses its Big Deal packages through the Carolina Consortium, an arrangement that has saved ECU millions of dollars over the past decade and greatly increased the number of e-journal titles available. Unfortunately, even with the increased negotiating power associated with the Carolina Consortium, annual Big Deal price increases have far exceeded the growth in the Virtual Library budget. In fact, the Virtual Library budget has decreased 1.79% over the past five years while the price of our four largest Big Deals has increased by 20% over the same time period. The Virtual Library budget has been shielded from the majority of cuts the Libraries’ budgets have sustained since the recession began. For example, Joyner’s acquisitions budget decreased by 55% and its operating budget by 29%.

For the past eight years, Joyner and Laupus librarians have found ways to manage budget cuts and the increasing costs of subscription-based resources while protecting large e-journal packages that are important to research and learning at ECU. However, like many other academic libraries, we must now consider altering at least one Big Deal in order to stay within our budget for FY2017 and subsequent years.

We have identified Elsevier, whose journals are available through Science Direct, as an outlier in cost. Our Big Deal with Elsevier represents an ever-increasing proportion of the Virtual budget – currently approximately 48%. To stay within our budget, it will be necessary for the ECU Libraries to break our Big Deal with Elsevier. Needed Elsevier content will still be available. We will pursue individual subscriptions to the most used journals. For lesser-used titles, Interlibrary Loan or Document Delivery will be used to meet the campus community’s needs.

Communication with various groups will be important over the next few months. The Library Directors shared information with Academic Council on March 9, 2016. Two library forums, one on each campus, will be held on April 21, 2016 from 10:00a – 11:30a in Laupus Library 4503 or April 22, 2016 from 2:30p-4:00p in Joyner Library 2409. These forums will be a chance for us to share the latest news on this project as well as for the campus community to provide feedback. We encourage you to convey your comments to using the Comments Blog tab at the top of this page.

If you prefer to comment directly to an individual please see the contacts on the right sidebar of this page.

FACULTY FORUMS

Attend a faculty forum addressing the change on April 21, 2016 from 10:00a – 11:30a in Laupus Library 4503 or April 22, 2016 from 2:30p-4:00p in Joyner Library 2409.