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 were some of the first institutions
to have written about their own experience with canceling the Big Deal several years
ago, but are those experiences the norm in terms of changes in 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 both internal and external communication strategies, and examine the
impact these decisions have had on their collections in terms of interlibrary loan and
collection development strategies. The results of a brief survey measuring the status of
the audience members with respect to Big Deals, communication efforts with campus
stakeholders, and impacts on collections will also be discussed.
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