Due to budget constraints and annual inflation increases levied by publishers on subscriptions, the University Libraries have had to reduce spending on information resources by about $500,000 annually since fiscal year 2020-21. These cancellations are necessary to address annual inflationary increases in the cost of existing subscriptions and to make room for any new strategic subscriptions. Take a look at the Libraries' budget overview and our strategies for managing the Information Access Budget (IAB).
About 90% of our IAB is spent on subscriptions to journals, electronic packages, databases, or other information resources that have recurring costs and inflationary increases that average 4% to 5% each year. Ongoing annual inflation requires that we reduce IAB expenditures by approximately $500,000 each year to maintain a balanced budget.
(To learn more about inflation's impact on library budgets, see "Serials Price Projections 2020", Five Year Journal Price Increase History (2015-2019), and "Deal or No Deal: Periodicals Price Survey 2019.")
After having received and carefully considered feedback from across campus on a list of potential cancellations, we have settled on a final list of information resources that will be canceled or significantly renegotiated in fiscal year 2021-22 to meet the budget reduction. Review the list.
We recognize these reductions will impact UA faculty and students, and we’re committed to minimizing that as much as possible. For the 2020-22 round of cuts, we looked primarily at content that overlaps with existing resources or is available through alternative means of access (e.g., interlibrary loan). Other criteria included usage data, cost per use (relative to similar content/resources), and centrality of the content to the discipline. We also considered the collective impact of the reductions across disciplines and attempted to be as equitable as possible.