In late 2008, the University of Oregon’s library faced a financial double punch. The recession meant belt tightening across the university at a time when the rising cost of journal subscriptions had already put a strain on the library’s budget. “We were faced with a two-pronged financial attack here,” recalled David C. Fowler, the library’s head of licensing, grants administration, and collection analysis.
Something had to give. That something, as it turned out, was Oregon’s so-called Big Deals with two heavyweight publishers, Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons. Big Deals provide large collections of journal articles but also lock institutions into multiyear subscriptions at rising prices that many libraries say they can no longer afford. At Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, another institution under pressure to make ends meet, those deals were eating up 40 percent of the library’s materials budget.
http://chronicle.com/article/Libraries-Abandon-Expensive/128220/?sid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en
It depends
on if you actually need those journals. We have a deal with Elsevier but if we weren’t in a group instuitutional deal we could be paying twice as much for the access we get.
There’s nothing wrong with one or two deals taking up 40% of your budget if you are getting value for money. And if you weren’t why are you in the deals in the first place?
need to pay for subscription to read the article!
So I’ll try my public libraries data bases.