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Subscription Cancellations by the Libraries for FY05

In response to less than full inflation funding in the Libraries FY 05 budget, a decision was made to concentrate subscription cancellations on Elsevier Science titles because they represented 27% of our serials expenditures overall. To make these cancellations, the Libraries needed to move away from license terms that required an annual “guaranteed spending level”. To continue with these license terms in years of reduced funding would give unfair disadvantage to other publishers. The Libraries administration, with the support of the Faculty Committee on the Library System, decided to move to an Elsevier license without such a clause, even though it meant canceling a fairly large number of titles.

MIT Libraries were not unique in taking such action. A recent article in Library Journal reported on these actions:

“In the last year, the anger and frustration simmering in libraries for a decade or more over the growing dysfunction of the scholarly communications system found a voice, a cause, and a cadre of allies around the globe. This time, the voices that said, “No” to the Big Deals were those of faculty members and academic officers at some very prestigious institutions – Cornell, Harvard, the Research Triangle institutions in North Carolina, MIT, and, for a time, the University of California…. These universities spoke for many when they declared their intent to choose journal titles the old-fashioned way – year by year, title by title, based on the value of the content rather than the size of the package.” (L. Orsdel & K. Born)

After comparing use and citation data, and soliciting input from faculty departments, the staff selected 89 Elsevier titles for cancellation, and 98 Elsevier titles for electronic-only subscriptions.

In addition, 22 journal titles from other publishers were cancelled. In database subscriptions, reductions in the number of simultaneous users for some products, and different user interfaces for others, resulted in additional savings.

As always, the Libraries’ staff strive to allocate available funding to journals with the best content, and databases with the greatest utility, for MIT’s faculty and students.

Cancellations were overseen by Carol Fleishauer, former Associate Director for Collection Services, MIT Libraries

For current information on this topic, please contact: Ellen Duranceau, efinnie at mit.edu / 617.253.8483