The Silent Battle on the Budget: The Effect of Centralized Indexing on Collection Analysis in Primo and EBSCO

Abstract

Significant cuts to the collections budget and a fire in the main library at Kansas State University transitioned the Libraries toward an increased focus upon electronic resources management. As electronic resource discovery continues to be hampered by market competition between Ex Libris and EBSCO library vendors, difficulties were identified in obtaining accurate usage statistics for resource renewal reviews, particularly EBSCO products. Kansas State University Libraries use the ALMA URM in combination with Primo discovery service, which experiences known resolver complications when paired with EBSCO resources. Technical services librarians and information technology staff tested several workarounds, but the question remains whether any proposed resolutions can be truly effective in avoiding collection usage biases and analytical discrepancies, resulting from exclusive indexing. Crunching the numbers, monetarily and analytically, the Ex Libris and EBSCO rivalry is an onerous battle on the budget and resource renewal process.

Barriers to an inclusive academic library collection

“…(Gilbert, 1999) Libraries have consistently experienced shrinking or flat budgets. Even a flat collections budget diminishes purchasing power because of increasing cost of annual subscriptions and unexpected costs associated with patron driven acquisitions plans (Dulaney, 2018;Hoeve and Geuther, 2021;Sommers, 2017). The majority of general academic library collection funds are supporting expensive subscriptions of books, journals, research databases and streaming videos.…”