Proposed Book Budget Changes, 2020/21

Background and Evidence Based Acquisition

Traditionally, most library book purchases have been based on educated guesswork. After considering the author, publisher, topic, and other factors, we buy books that support our campus’ research and learning interests and needs. Then we hope that those books will be checked out and used frequently.

In recent years, libraries have placed more emphasis on evidence based acquisition (EBA). With EBA, a library is granted access to large numbers of books for a year and then is able to purchase the specific titles that were used the most. Research has consistently shown that EBA yields a far lower cost per title and cost per use, compared to traditional individual book purchases.

To give one concrete example, UNCG uses an EBA plan to access to all of Wiley’s 23,000 ebooks through our library catalog at the cost of about $1 per title. As an added bonus, all of UNCG's Wiley ebook purchases are shared with all UNC system campuses, and other campus's purchases are shared with us.

We currently have EBA plans with the following publishers

  • American Chemical Society
  • Bloomsbury
  • Cambridge
  • Oxford
  • Taylor and Francis
  • UNC Press
  • Wiley
  • And many, many additional university presses and smaller publishers.

Our current count of books available via EBA is about 175,000. Thousands of newly published titles are added to these EBA programs each year. By protecting EBA plans and cutting individual title selections by about 25% we are able to continue to grow and build our long term collection, despite the budget reduction.

Standing Orders and Monographic Series

Libraries have used "standing orders" to automatically order every volume published as part of an irregular series. Most standing orders are monographic series. The advantage of that approach is that library staff don't have to order each individual title. The disadvantage is that we automatically get (and have to pay for) every single title within a series. For 2021, we are canceling all standing orders, but we can instead order the individual titles that are most relevant to UNCG. The vast majority of these standing orders are for print materials, which we believe should not be a collections priority during a pandemic, while we have strong emphasis on online learning.

Standing Orders for which we will no longer automatically receive every single volume as it is published

Comments and Feedback

We encourage faculty input regarding the impact of these reductions on your research and teaching. If you believe our proposed cuts contain egregious errors or individual resources whose cancellation would cause irreparable harm to UNCG, please let us know. Keep in mind that it is almost certain that next year will see additional cuts. Send comments to Tim Bucknall, Assistant Dean of University Libraries. We are willing to attend departmental meetings or meet with department heads, if more information, context, or discussion would be helpful.