No Big Deal: Three Libraries Survive Cuts to Serials Access | ALA Annual 2012

"À la carte journal purchasing is back in vogue, it seems. On Saturday at ALA in Anaheim, three librarians took to the podium to describe their experiences after finding that the big deal their library had in place was no longer affordable. The big deal, an arrangement that has been standard in libraries for years (and criticized for almost as long), refers to the purchase of bundles of journals from mega-publishers such as Elsevier and Wiley. The idea is that buying serials this way saves money on subscriptions and on staff time. It has been especially common in the purchase of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and medicine) materials, which have been regarded as too expensive to subscribe to any other way....