Using data for 2,717 journals and more than 9,000 acquisition opportunities, this study shows how journal prices vary by level of aggregation (single-journal subscription or full-text database), resource provider type (scholarly society, university press, other nonprofit organization, commercial publisher, or library vendor), and broad subject…

Academic libraries continue to face funding pressures compounded by the need to provide students with access to electronic resources, both in journal and book formats. With space constraints and the need to repurpose library space to other uses, libraries must carefully examine the move to e-only formats for books to determine if the format makes…

This study presents and analyzes the findings of a 2012 survey of member libraries belonging to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) about publishers' large journal bundles and compares the results to earlier surveys. The data illuminate five research questions: market penetration, journal bundle construction, collection format shifts,…

Introduction: Our aim is to compare the advantages and problems of e-book acquisition identified in research literature to those experienced by two Swedish university libraries. Method: A literature review was used to identify the main issues related to acquisition of e-books by academic libraries. The data for comparison were collected through…

Library school courses focusing on management and budgeting are as important as ever, as are continuing education opportunities for librarians who may not have encountered a severe economic recession. The journal crisis of the 1990s is still a fresh and unpleasant memory for many. However, for other librarians who may have graduated from library…

The year 2009 will be remembered as one of angst, with the economy dominating news around the world. Few libraries were immune to the extraordinary financial pressures. The library marketplace by year's end was in a weakened position, with prospects of a long recovery at best. Concern persists that even deeper budget cuts will come when federal…

The publishers' hall at the recent Association of College and Research Libraries conference, held in Seattle in mid-March, was a study in give-and-take: how much publishers such as Elsevier and Oxford University Press will give in this lousy economy, and how much budget-strapped librarians can take. Libraries are some of the biggest customers for…

Ever since North Carolina State University Libraries launched their Endeca-based OPAC replacement in the beginning of 2006, the library world has been completely obsessed with ditching their old, tired catalog interfaces (and with good reason) for the greener pastures of more sophisticated indexing, more accurate relevance ranking, dust jackets,…