Re: Seven ARL Libraries Face Major Planned or Potential Budget Cuts

[Andrew Waller <waller@ucalgary.ca>]

Here's another thought about backing out of Big Deals that I 
don't think has been discussed yet:  If Big Deals are 
disassembled, are our acquisition units prepared to deal with 
sizable increases in orders?  At the worst, libraries could be 
looking at having to order many individual journals instead of 
one big package; at best, the Big Deals would be reconstituted 
into smaller collections, which would still be an increase in the 
number of orders (a few/several smaller bundles instead of one 
package).  With the adoption of Big Deals and the switch from 
print to electronic, I suspect that many libraries have 
reorganized their serial acquisition units to the point that they 
are quite different from what they were several years ago; how 
well could they cope with a sudden "change back" of sorts? 
Granted, we're talking about e-journals here so there is likely 
to be no check-in or claiming, but there is still ordering and 
bill paying not to mention work with link resolvers and MARC 
record services.  The people working in libraries are smart and 
resourceful so I'm sure we could handle this situation, one way 
or another, sooner or later, but I also think that there would be 
an awful lot of work involved.  Would that extra work be worth 
dropping Big Deals?

On the subject of link resolvers and MARC record services, how 
well would these folks deal with dramatic changes to Big Deals? 
At present, they're pretty good at responding to the wide and 
varied packages that are available at present but if Big Deals 
are chopped up, I could see a plethora of new, smaller successor 
packages, likely tailored to individual libraries and consortia 
(never mind dealing with the hundreds and thousands of individual 
journals that were once bundled in larger, somewhat standard 
groupings).  Again, they probably could do it but it would 
involve added time, effort, and money.

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Waller
Serials Librarian
Collections Services
Libraries and Cultural Resources
University of Calgary

waller@ucalgary.ca
(403) 220-8133 voice
(403) 284-2109 fax
http://library.ucalgary.ca/profiles/andrew-waller/