In December, the Library notified faculty of our preliminary plans for database and journal cancellations for the coming fiscal year. This will mark the fifth consecutive year that the Library’s budget has been cut, and each cut necessitates increasingly significant cancellations for the Library and the faculty & students whom we support. Two years ago, we cancelled individual print and online journal subscriptions. Last year the Library lost four reference/instruction librarian positions through layoffs and attrition at the now closed regional libraries. This upcoming fiscal year we will lose a reference/instruction librarian position at Gleeson, and we will be cancelling major databases and journal packages.
For more detailed background information on Library budget cuts and cancellations including a list of proposed database and journal cancellations, see:
We are all dealing with budget cuts, but because the Library supports all faculty and their programs & students, these are your cuts as well. You will feel them as keenly as we do. We encourage you to send us feedback about our proposed cancellations, but also encourage you to consider whether the Library, in uniquely supporting all academic programs, should be treated differently when it comes to budget cuts that will impact all academic departments—and provide this feedback to the administration.
New resources during budget cuts?
Strange as it sounds, we do acquire new resources even while implementing budget cuts. Each year the Library has some funds from endowed accounts. These funds fluctuate with the market and are consequently unpredictable year to year. This makes them risky to use for ongoing journal and database subscriptions, but ideal for what we refer to as “one-time-purchases.” Such purchases include something as small as a single book, or as large as an online journal archive. In fact, since we no longer have a budget to buy books, all of our book purchases use endowed funds. Some of our most recent one-time-purchases include:
- Oxford Handbooks Online
- Harper’s Bazaar Archive
- Latin American Newspapers
- LGBT Magazine Archive
- Vogue Archive
Image: “Ice Cracks” by Brett Davis