You probably have already heard about the cut to the MU Libraries Collections planned for the coming year . Here’s what we know as of now about what it will mean for the Health Sciences Library:
Our collections allocation will be reduced about $150,000 compared to last year – a 20% reduction.
Meeting this target will require us to:
- Drastically reduce our book spending to only $21,000 in new purchases in FY2017.
- Cancel $100,000 in Health Sciences Library journal subscriptions. These cuts will be made based on a combination of factors, including:
- Usage and cost per use.
- Journals with subscription prices which far outstrip normal inflation are getting special scrutiny. Some examples
- To the extent possible, we will try to maintain subscriptions to the journals you publish in, cite, or have identified as core to your work.
- This $100,000 cut must be taken from the $577,000 in subscriptions under the direct financial control of the Health Sciences Library.
- These cuts are in addition to reductions to University Libraries centrally-administered journal subscription packages from Elsevier, Wiley, Sage, Oxford and Springer. Any cuts to journals in those packages will be in addition to, not in the place of the $100,00 journal cut facing the Health Sciences Library.
A list of all journal subscriptions under review, with prices and publishers listed, is now live on the Health Sciences Library web site, along with additional details about the budget challenges facing our library. The list will be a continually updated with cancellation information until we reach our budget reduction goal.
Please let us know if you have questions and concerns.