The UC library system is negotiating its contracts with
publishers in an effort to maintain access to research materials
for students, faculty and staff.
Escalating commercial journal prices, compounded by the
state’s budget crisis, threaten to undermine the UC’s
ability to maintain its extensive, up-to-date collection of
scientific journals.
“The state and university budget crunch has directly hit
the libraries, as it has almost every other entity in the
university,” said John Ober, director of education and
strategic innovation at the California Digital Library. “But
the real problem is the unsustainable nature of the commercial
journal prices,” Ober said.
The CDL is carrying out negotiations on behalf of the UC with
several large publishing companies, including Elsevier, a company
Ober says has increased prices of the journals it publishes at
rates that far exceed inflation.
It costs the UC millions of dollars a year ““ about 50
percent of the UC’s online materials budget ““ to access
the journals published by Elsevier, which provides access to over
1,100 online journals.
But the cost of Elsevier journals does not match their use, said
Biomedical Reference Librarian Janice Contini.
Elsevier journals only comprise about a quarter of UC systemwide
online journal usage, Cortini said.
“If you look at what faculty is actually using, 25 percent
of (it) is Elsevier,” she said.
The UC will not be able to afford the rights to access Elsevier
journals at the current price level.
“Simply put, the library cannot afford to continue to do
business as usual,” wrote Gary Strong, a UCLA librarian, in a
statement on the UCLA library Web site. “The annual
subscription for a journal in the sciences may easily cost more
than a new car.”
The university’s current contract with Elsevier ends on
Dec. 31, 2003.
Librarians fear the lack of availability of prominent,
up-to-date journals might compromise the university’s
position as a leading research institution.
Cynthia Shelton, associate university librarian for collections
and technical services at UCLA, said successful negotiations are
crucial to maintaining the quality and diversity of materials
students, faculty and researchers currently enjoy.
“(Librarians) would be faced with the difficulty of having
to, campus by campus, identify and select core titles that our
faculty depend on,” Shelton said.
Budget cuts and high journal prices already forced the UCLA
library to cancel 1,400 subscriptions this summer, and Shelton
estimated UCLA would probably lose about 700 journals if
negotiations fail.
The UCLA Library’s budget was cut by 6 percent when the
state budget was signed in August, leading to a $700,000 reduction
in its collections funding and a $1.4 million reduction in its
operations funding.
The UC’s current contracts allow for systemwide access to
Elsevier journals, meaning that any university within the UC system
can access and use the journals.
Shelton said maintaining systemwide rights is important because
UCLA could not afford to buy the rights to all the journals
alone.
Veronica Villasenor, a fourth-year psychology student, is
concerned about possibly losing access to materials she uses
now.
“Usually, when I do research papers, I depend on
what’s accessible online,” Villasenor said.