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Library Collections Budget Reduction: Home

This guide provides information about the University Libraries strategies for absorbing the budget reduction and rebalancing our collections in order to address the financial contraints affecting our university.

Overview

In 2020, we communicated library collections changes resulting from the FY2020-21 budget reduction. This guide has been updated with additional information as those decisions continue to play out this fiscal year.

We maintain a diverse collection heavily weighted towards electronic subscriptions that provide immediate access to resources. Many of those resources are licensed in large packages and complex, multi-year agreements designed to provide the greatest amount of content at a reduced cost. As a result, some changes planned last year are coming into effect at the end of the 2021 calendar year.

Subscriptions ending in December 2021

What this means for you

On-demand access to the impacted resources will end in December 2021. You will have continued access to these resources through our Interlibrary Loan service. Place an online request for materials not available in our collection.

Contact your subject librarian for more information or assistance in evaluating alternatives and navigating the interlibrary loan process.

Agile and responsive collection strategies

In the past year, we have aggressively worked to reduce the cost of our collection and redirect savings to retain materials that are integral to research and scholarship based on faculty feedback, including:

  • Continuing to negotiate aggressively with vendors and publishers to eliminate yearly cost increases, typically 5-7% per year. In 2020 these efforts resulted in approximately $70,000 in cost savings.
  • Splitting several large journal packages to retain high-use titles as determined by departmental needs. Notable inclusions are titles from the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Institute of Physics.
  • Partnering with other campus areas to identify core materials integral to research and scholarship and developing cost-sharing agreements to sustain these materials.

We will have greater flexibility in meeting the needs of faculty, researchers, and students going forward as we see further savings. We welcome your feedback on how you currently use library collections in your curriculum and research. We will continue to analyze and make changes to our collections to meet the current and emerging needs of the WMU community. 

Changes to Taylor & Francis subscriptions (updated Dec. 17)

After extensive analysis, we are making additional changes to our Taylor and Francis journal package subscriptions.

We will end subscriptions to low-use journal titles and retain access to higher-use titles while generating significant cost savings by subscribing to individual titles rather than a journal package. This change will grant us additional flexibility while continuing to provide a robust research collection. Learn more about this change and view a list of impacted titles (Excel file).