By Alison Bobal
The McGoogan Library of Medicine would like your feedback on planned reductions to the library’s collections.
Our reduction target is $325,000, 16% of the library’s overall expenditures on collections. Each year the library faces inflationary costs of our electronic resources (i.e. ebooks, databases and journals), plus a steadily rising cost of print books. These inflationary rates average around 10%, with some databases going as high as 18%. In years past we made some cuts to our collections and relied on endowments to help offset inflation. We are now at a point where our budget and endowments can no longer absorb these inflationary costs. Additionally, a budget reduction of 1.9% for FY16 makes cancellations unavoidable.
In addition to making cuts to the library’s collection, we are also developing long-term strategies that aim to meet the expanding educational curricula and research programs on campus, investigating new ways to acquire and deliver content, and exploring potential new revenue sources.
We’ve done a thorough analysis of our collections expenditures and have identified resources for cancellation. Our analysis included usage stats and content overlap. The resources we’ve identified for cuts cover books, journals, and databases.
Additional information can be found in our frequently asked questions.
Books
Due to the budget pressure, we will be drastically limiting the number of books we purchase. The only books added this year may be new editions of some core titles and individual requested titles. Electronic books typically cost more than print books so to help reduce expenditures, any books we do purchase will be primarily in print.
Ebook titles that are up for cancellation come from two resources: ClinicalKey and Stat!Ref (a full list of these ebooks can be found here). These 1,141 ebook titles constitute about 16% of our ebook collection.
Journals
The 1,300 journal title cancellations primarily come from three resources/packages: Sage, ClinicalKey and Health Business Elite. There are also additional titles that are individual subscriptions. All of these titles represent 15% of our current journal collection. A full list of journal cancellations can be found here.
Databases
- ClinicalKey – includes ebooks, journals, patient education, drug information, and practice guidelines
- Grammarly – a resource to help with writing and grammar
- Health Business Elite – literature database covering healthcare administration and non-clinical aspects of institution management
- The official ABMS directory of board certified medical specialists
- Social Services Abstracts – literature database focused on social work, human services and related areas
- Sociological Abstracts – literature database covering social and behavioral sciences
- Stat!Ref – small collection of ebooks
Please send comments and questions to Alison Bobal at abobal@unmc.edu by August 31, 2015.