"Big Deal" Deconstruction--A Summary

In 2012 Mississippi State University's library system was faced with a $500,000.00 budget gap and only a short amount of time to decide how to proceed.

In the past years MSU encountered some "holes" in their metrics and analytic estimates--so it was more difficult to analyze user statistics than it should have been. In previous years MSU had filled these holes through estimation increases. However daunting, MSU librarians did find a way to estimate user statistics for every year by adding a 6% price increase to 2010 statistics in order to determine 2011 statistics (this seemed quite brilliant to me). The year this analysis was performed, MSU libraries did not cancel any "Big Deal" acquisitions.
In 2012, with the budget cut looming, it was impossible to keep every "Big Deal" acquisition in the library system.

To make a long story short, since that is the point of a summary, MSU presented all the statistical findings to the Library Administrative Council. The decision was made to cancel "Big Deal" packages from Wiley-Blackwell and Springer. Once these packages were cancelled, the library then purchased individual subscriptions to the 200 journals with the best user statistics/most downloads/etc.

This decision saved the library about $400,000.00 for the year, but many of the losses to the library's electronic collection were significant.

The most important part of this article provides insight about the impact of cutting the "Big Deal" packages based on user statistics, instead of using a broader scope for examining the different journals and resources included in each deal.

As a result of cancelling the subscriptions for these packages, "Current access to over 2,800 journals was lost. Many disciplines, especially in the Social Sciences, lost all of their titles from Springer and Wiley-Blackwell. Some small departments on campus that have fewer students and faculty

than large departments have been most affected. The library did retain perpetual access to some paid subscriptions and consortia titles, but only for older materials. Old perpetual access rights do not help with access to the current material that is typically the material in high demand by the students and faculty."

 

 Librarians at MSU would like to involve faculty, students, and other involved parties next time they have to make such a large decision about cancelling resources. 

The user statistics certainly tell an important part of the story, but they do not tell the whole story. 

I hope we can discuss in class how other students in LIS 755 would measure the necessity of different online resources!

-E. Anthony