The Virtual Library of Virginia
The Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) will cancel subscriptions and reduce access to journals and databases in coming months to deal with a projected $850,000 shortfall over the next biennium. In order to balance the budget, VIVA undertook a serious review of all expenses, services, commitments and contractual obligations. In meetings held on March 7, 2002 and June 6, 2002, the VIVA Steering Committee reviewed recommendations for reductions from its Resources for Users Committee. Cancellation decisions were based on a systematic analysis that took into account data on statistics on use, extensive surveys at each campus, database usability studies and input provided by a broad cross section of the library community in Virginia. Five principles guided the Steering Committee in the decision making process:
- Minimize the impact. VIVA will protect resources that are most widely used and that support academic programs across the greatest number and type of member campuses.
- Content over convenience. VIVA will make every effort to reduce the costs of content before eliminating content entirely, for example by switching to a somewhat less preferred provider of the content. Although users may experience the inconvenience of a new interface or a short wait queue for access, they will retain valuable information content that might otherwise be lost.
- Vendor performance and pricing policies. The responsiveness of each information vendor to VIVA's concerns, the reliability of each online service, each vendor's willingness to negotiate on price, and the availability of statistics on usage will be considered and taken into account.
- Content over indexing. Taking cost into account, electronic journals and other content sources will be given more weight in retention decisions than indexing and abstracting databases.
- Breadth rather than depth. Each service retained by VIVA during this fiscal crisis must offer something unique to higher education in Virginia.
Actions taken by the VIVA Steering Committee in response to the budget shortfall include:
- Reducing the number of concurrent users for the OCLC FirstSearch database service from 31 to 18 (effective July 1, 2002).
- Moving the Sociological Abstracts database to CSA (effective August 1, 2002).
- Canceling indexing and abstracting databases (effective July 1, 2002) ArticleFirst; Book Review Digest; Business and Industry; Business Dateline; Business Organizations, Agencies and Publications Directory; Business and Management Practices; DataTimes; Disclosure Corporate Snapshots; Education Index; ERIC (via FirstSearch); EventLine; FactSearch; General Science Index; Humanities Index; Newspaper Abstracts; Readers' Guide Abstracts; Social Science Index and World Almanac.
- Canceling Electronic Journals (effective December 31, 2002):
- Canceling 172 electronic journals from Ideal/Academic Press. This cancellation was related to the recent acquisition of Academic Press by Elsevier, which had indicated that it would no longer deal with consortia.
- Canceling 5 HighWire Press electronic journals (Academic Psychiatry, Biophysical Journal, Clinical Chemistry, Journal of General Physiology, and the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry).
The budget situation: The Commonwealth's budget crisis resulted in a $253,000 reduction to VIVA's allocation for the 2002-2004 biennium. That reduction, combined with contractual and predicted cost increases (due to enrollment growth and other factors), was estimated to reduce VIVA's purchasing power by more than $850,000 over the biennium.
As is the case for VIVA, most of Virginia's public higher education libraries are also facing budget reductions. This situation reinforces VIVA's role of supporting the sharing of library collections to the maximum extent possible. On many campuses, articles from journal titles cancelled by VIVA can only be obtained now through interlibrary loan. Consequently, at its March 2002 meeting the VIVA Steering Committee affirmed the critical importance of VIVA's continuing support for interlibrary loan within Virginia. This support, about 7% of the VIVA budget, will not be reduced.
With more than 96% of the total VIVA budget allocated for direct services (electronic collections, interlibrary loan and training) for our members and other administrative costs representing less than 4%, most of VIVA's cuts to balance its budget had to come from its electronic resources budget. These cuts will affect every campus in Virginia. In some cases students and faculty will have to wait for an open port before gaining access to an online database or use alternative sources in lieu of cancelled titles. In the case of electronic journals, many students and faculty will no longer have access to full text journals once offered by VIVA. Some libraries will need to initiate local subscriptions to titles canceled by VIVA in order to continue their support for local research and instructional needs. While the cutbacks are regrettable, the willingness of many vendors to hold the line on price increases allowed by current contracts prevented the situation from being much worse. The VIVA Steering Committee hopes that once the budget crisis is resolved that funding will be restored to enable the consortium to continue its work providing authoritative library resources to over 300,000 students and faculty in Virginia.
About VIVA: VIVA is the consortium of nonprofit academic libraries at 39 public, 30 nonprofit private higher education institutions, and the Library of Virginia. VIVA acquires high quality online information and facilitates resource sharing on behalf of faculty and students at campuses throughout the Commonwealth. Through VIVA, public higher education institutions in Virginia have access to more than 200 databases and thousands of electronic journals and newspapers. VIVA is funded by appropriations from the Virginia General Assembly and contributions from member institutions, and is governed by a Steering Committee representing all public colleges and universities (doctoral, 4-year, and 2-year schools) and the nonprofit private member institutions.
For further information: Contact Katherine A. Perry, VIVA Director (kperry@gmu.edu) or Ralph Alberico, VIVA Steering Committee Chair and Dean of Libraries, James Madison University (alberira@jmu.edu).
6/20/02
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