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Collection Development Sustainability Task Force: Home

2023 Update

This Guide will remain public, but the work of this taskforce has concluded in the end of 2023. We are grateful for the support and insight from our Bucknell Community. Going forward, assessment of Big Deals and reevaluation of individual titles will be part of the work of the Collection Development Team.

If you have questions about any element of collection development, we encourage you to reach out to your liaison librarian.

Welcome from Param Bedi, Vice President of Library & Information Technology

this introduction was written in Spring 2021 as an introduction to the work of the Collection Development Sustainability Task Force


The rising cost of scholarly resources has been a challenge in higher education for many years.  In the past L&IT has engaged with specific departments to make data-informed decisions on the reallocation of resources, and renegotiated our contracts with vendors and publishers.  Bucknell will likely be faced with online subscription fee increases of more than 25%, over the next 5 years without continued action.  This is not sustainable. Simultaneously, we see openings of new possibilities of access and more open methods of scholarly communication that are worth pursuing.

In consultation with Kevin Gilmore, chair of the Committee on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), and Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering I formed the Collection Development Sustainability Taskforce to address this issue.  These challenges are not unique to Bucknell, and we will be working and learning from other colleges and universities who have already taken concrete steps to address them.  We will also be engaging with Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) in this endeavor.

We will work alongside CLIR and other faculty groups as we make decisions moving forward.  One of our guiding principles is: We will do this with faculty. The charge of the Taskforce is to make access to the information resources needed for teaching and research affordable, and sustainable.

On this guide

  • Deepen your understanding of the barriers to access that many academic publishers create.
  • See how other colleges & universities have been responding to seek to change the culture of publishing and access
  • Learn about what the collection development task force has been working on, and the process used in assessing the Elsevier Big Deal.
  • Identify resources you can use to publish open access, access open information, and support your students in their research processes.

Members of the Collection Development Sustainability Task Force

Jason Snyder: Librarian/Communications and Outreach Coordinator, Task Force Co-chair

Eloise Stevens: Arts and Humanities Librarian, Task Force Co-chair

Abby Brown: Project Manager: Library and Information Technology

Kevin Gilmore: Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Katherine Furlong: Executive Director, Research Services and Digital Scholarship

Dan Heuer: Head of Discovery and Access Services 

Toni Baylets-Holsinger: L&IT Procurement & Asset Analyst

Param Bedi: Vice President, Library & Information Technology

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This does not apply to material linked or cited.