[Eril-l] Is Breaking Up THAT Hard to Do?

Mon Nov 9 09:41:50 PST 2015

We are about to break up a number of big deals, despite getting pretty
decent use of the non-subscribed titles. We simply no longer have a choice.
If the vendors can come up with a new offer we can afford, great. If not,
we'll have unhappy patrons, but there simply is not a choice; the funding
isn't there any more.

I looked carefully at all our big deals, and have a pretty good sense of
the new "core" which is a bit different than our subscription titles. One
package in particular gives us amazing return for the money; based on use
statistics it's pretty clear that we don't really have 120 "core" titles,
but more like 350. But we can't afford those subscriptions, regardless of
cost-per-use.

Karen Jensen
Collection Development Officer
Rasmuson Library
University of Alaska Fairbanks
907-474-6695
kljensen at alaska.edu

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On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 8:33 AM, Ian Gibson <igibson at brocku.ca> wrote:

> Agree with Melissa and IMO the smaller you are the more sense the big
> deals make (if you can afford them).
>
>
>
> We broke a consortially brokered big deal last year when the Canadian
> Dollar tanked. After making some other more strategic cancellations this
> year, we were hoping to rejoin that deal through the consortium but at a
> price closer to what our closest peer comparators were paying (for this
> particular deal our historic spend was higher than our peers). Not
> surprisingly, the publisher wasn’t interested in playing ball on that, as
> it wouldn’t be fair to the other consortia members who’ve stuck with the
> deal. Our decision was to reinstate the bare minimum number of
> subscriptions* which should reduce our expenditure with this publisher by
> about 55%.
>
>
>
> We remain amenable to rejoining the big deal if the publisher ever
> develops a pricing model that has like institutions paying like prices.
>
>
>
> I do not anticipate that this will please our users, who have become
> accustomed to the all you can eat big deal smorgasbord, but the bottom line
> is that this will provide us with budget flexibility for the next few years
> to improve funding to the things that matter – Special Collections, OA,
> Data, etc.
>
>
>
> *in this case it will be about 35 titles decided by use (so mostly social
> sciences) – I could have easily made a case for about 100 other titles but
> the goal here was cost reduction.
>
>
>
> *Ian Gibson*, MISt
> Collections Librarian
> Brock University | James A. Gibson Library
> Niagara Region  |  500 Glenridge Ave.  |  St. Catharines, Ontario  L2S 3A1
> E igibson at brocku.ca | T  905 688 5550  x6223  | @IanGibson11
>
>
>
> Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail, including any attachments, may
> contain confidential or privileged information. If you are not the intended
> recipient, please notify the sender by e-mail and immediately delete this
> message and its contents.
>
>
>
> *From:* Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] *On Behalf Of *Melissa
> Belvadi
> *Sent:* Monday, November 9, 2015 11:33 AM
> *To:* Harker, Karen
> *Cc:* eril-l at lists.eril-l.org; Colleen A McGhee-French
> *Subject:* Re: [Eril-l] Is Breaking Up THAT Hard to Do?
>
>
>
> I was just at the Charleston Conference where I heard a member of the
> audience at one session complain about having to pay for unused titles in a
> Big Deal package.
>
> I thought it reflected a lack of understanding of what a Big Deal actually
> is.
>
>
>
> So I want to emphasize something Karen says here: "when we calculated the
> alternative of subscribing to the most used titles, would be more
> economical to split up".
>
>
>
> Whenever I've done an analysis on our Big Deals that are based on historic
> spend, I find that the titles in our "core" (the basis for our price) are
> indeed by far the most heavily used. And the smaller price we pay for "'all
> of the rest" is still very cost effective to have access to that long tail.
> That is, our cost per full text article used in the long tail is still well
> within our internal threshold for renewing journals, either in packages or
> individually.
>
>
>
> The important point here is to actually do that analysis, and don't think
> of the titles in the package that you don't use as "wasted money".
>
> You are paying a pittance per "all the rest" journal relative to their
> retail cost exactly because your use of them is expected to be very low and
> take the form of that "long tail" distribution.
>
>
>
> Melissa Belvadi
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 12:24 PM, Harker, Karen <Karen.Harker at unt.edu>
> wrote:
>
> We’ve been going through this process for the last several years.  We
> evaluated every journal package in terms of overall use, overall
> cost-per-use, cost per title, CPU for each title, distribution of use
> across titles (as in 80% of uses were for what % of titles), and the
> list-price CPU.
>
>
>
> There were some packages which were clearly not good deals.  These were
> packages where the distribution of usage across titles was very limited
> (80% of uses were from < 15% of titles), and which, when we calculated the
> alternative of subscribing to the most used titles, would be more
> economical to split up.
>
>
>
> There were other packages which clearly *were* a good deal – low overall
> CPU, high distribution of usage across titles, and, most importantly, they
> were affordable.  These we continued.
>
>
>
> Then there are those packages which were a good deal, but were
> unaffordable to continue.  These were the biggest of the big deals.  These
> were the hardest to cut.  By any measure, attempting to subscribe to the
> better-performing titles individually would have exceeded the cost of the
> package.  But, taken as a single source of expenditures, they were
> unsustainable.  It was only after making these cuts (and explaining our
> intention to have to cut the biggest of the big deals) that the library was
> appropriated more funds.  But this is only temporary…no more than 3 years.
> This decision will have to be revisited.
>
>
>
> The point it, breaking up a well-performing package is very, very hard to
> do.  At some point, you have to cut titles that have very low CPU’s or
> otherwise are a good value.  It’s like getting very heavy mortgage at a
> very low rate.  Yes, it’s a good deal, but if you don’t have the money in
> the budget, you have to pass on it.
>
>
>
> Karen Harker
>
> Collection Assessment Librarian
>
> 940-565-2688
>
> Libraries are for Use <http://librariesareforuse.wordpress.com/>
>
>
>
> *From:* Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] *On Behalf Of *Colleen
> A McGhee-French
> *Sent:* Monday, November 09, 2015 10:05 AM
> *To:* eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
> *Subject:* [Eril-l] Is Breaking Up THAT Hard to Do?
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I tried searching the archives of this list, but perhaps I am not doing it
> correctly. I couldn't find any discussion of the idea of/implementation
> of/success with breaking up journal packages.
>
>
>
> Yet I would think we all have them - huge, huge journal packages, each
> containing more than 1200 or so journals, only a fraction of which are
> important/used - sometimes very important/highly used, each also containing
> hundreds of journals that we're paying for that have not been used in the
> last several years, at least to our knowledge.
>
>
>
> Has your institution thought about this? Tried it? Succeeded/failed at it,
> and why? What were the largest obstacles to success?
>
>
>
> Or has your institution thought about it and figured, Hey - the very
> important journals are used SO MUCH that the package overall is actually
> fairly economical and that *those* are the journals to concentrate on
> (rather than the huge number of unused journals)?
>
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
>
> Colleen
>
>
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>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Melissa Belvadi
>
> Collections Librarian
>
> University of Prince Edward Island
>
> mbelvadi at upei.ca 902-566-0581
>
>
>
>
>
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