Canceling the Big Deal is becoming more common, but there are still many unanswered questions about the impact of this change and the fundamental shift in the library collections model that it represents. Institutions like Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the University of Oregon have written about the impact of their own experience with canceling the Big Deal, but are those experiences the norm in terms of the impact on budgets, collection development, and interlibrary loan activity? Within the context of the University of California system’s move to cancel a system-wide contract with Elsevier, how are libraries managing the communication about Big Deals both internally with library personnel as well as externally with campus stakeholders? Three R1 libraries (University of Maryland, University of Oklahoma, and Kansas State University) will compare their data, discuss communication strategies, and examine the impact these decisions have had on their collections.
We are asking attendees to take a brief survey in advance telling us about their own status and plans with respect to the Big Deal (https://tinyurl.com/y3ka5vww). Results will be shared at the end of the session, as will links to examples of communication and resources libraries can use to facilitate their own community conversations about the Big Deal.
