Advocating for Change by Limiting New Business: An Interview with BTAA's Kimberly Armstrong - The Scholarly Kitchen

"Over the past several years, a number of major consortia have been taking a stronger position at the negotiating table with scholarly publishers. None has gotten more attention than Projekt Deal, whose member universities are steadily losing access to Elsevier journal content as subscriptions lapse, while asserting that there is little unmet faculty member demand for access. I have observed that North American consortia are likely to take a rather different approach than those in Europe, but at the same time I am focusing much greater attention on consortial rhetoric and behavior in North America.

It was for this reason that I was so interested to learn about this year’s tumult around Taylor and Francis’s (T&F) efforts to further mine its backfile — and to follow the pushback from library consortia against its plans. The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) is one of the most interesting consortia in North America, comprised of more than a dozen principally public flagship research universities and governed by its chief academic officers, and it was at the forefront of a joint effort among a group of consortia to engage on this issue. I was fortunate enough to be able to speak recently with Kimberly Armstrong, BTAA’s Director for Library Initiatives, and, regardless of where you stand on the particular issue at hand, the tactics pursued are notable, as is the outcome."