2018 Charleston Library Conference

For two decades, Big Deals have spurred an expansion of journal holdings and allowed libraries to offer researchers access to large collections of journals. The Big Deals typically offer discounts of 60 - 70% off the list price for individual journals, making it difficult to walk away from a Big Deal at a time when library budgets cannot kept pace with rising materials costs. Understanding the value and benefits, as well as the costs and limitations of the Big Deal model of scholarly publishing will better prepare us to minimize disruptions as we transition to sustainable models.

This Lively Discussion will kick off with a brief presentation on the evolution of Big Deal models and their current status in collection strategies. Four universities with student enrollments ranging from 17,000 to 66,000 and with annual collection budgets ranging from 8 million to 16 million will then briefly discuss how they have made decisions over the last two or three years and explore what might be next. How do you decide which Big Deals to retain and which to cancel or unbundle? How does scale affect approaches to evaluation and decision making? What tools can be used to evaluate the value of all of our collections including Big Deals? How do you manage communication with your stakeholders (especially university administration and faculty)?

We want to hear how you are managing/struggling with the same issue of evaluating and deciding what to do with Big Deals. What is coming next and how are folks coping? Is there a path to sustainability, or multiple paths? How do you manage disruption as you transition to sustainable models?