Memorial Libraries is allocated funds each year to spend on scholarly resources: books, journals, databases and multimedia. Memorial Libraries approaches each fiscal year determined to provide the best collections this budget permits.

Like other academic libraries across the country, 85 per cent of Memorial Libraries’ resources are purchased in U.S. dollars. A weak Canadian dollar and continuing price increases have had an increasingly substantial impact on the libraries’ buying power.

During the last five years, Memorial Libraries increased the portion of its budget allocated to journals from approximately $6 million to $7.5 million. Moreover, the libraries were not affected by the last round of budget cuts following the provincial budget.

However, it is now confronted with the difficult task of considering discontinuing subscriptions in 2016, as are many other Canadian academic libraries, to cope with increasing costs.

Memorial Libraries provides access to approximately 80,000 journals. Five per cent of these journals, which are included in publisher packages that are currently up for multi-year renewal, are being considered for possible cancellation. Of that five per cent, many will be available through alternate journal packages. Online access to issues subscribed to prior to 2016 will remain.

“Our aim, as always, is to protect the maximum possible number of high-quality resources that advance leading-edge research and teaching, while facing the challenge of balancing a steady-state budget,” said Lorraine Busby, university librarian. “Librarians devote their professional lives to building, enriching and managing collections.”

Memorial Libraries examined user statistics, uniqueness of journal titles, degree of overlap with other resources, the curricular needs of the university and other cost-saving measures to avoid cancellations during recent years.

“We began consulting with the campus community in June 2015 with a comprehensive journal retention survey,” said Ms. Busby. “This survey was intended to ensure that the impact on research and teaching was minimized. And we are committed to continuing this process. We want to stress that this is an ongoing dialogue and we value the input of our community of teachers and researchers.”

Memorial Libraries, in partnership with other major Canadian and international academic and research libraries, provides an extensive document delivery service for requested articles. This is a digital service and arrives via email in 2-3 business days.

“Senior administration is reviewing the situation to see where and how we might be able to continue the most valued journals,” said Dr. Noreen Golfman, provost and vice-president (academic).

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