Research by Subject: Collection Development Sustainability Task Force: The Collection Development Task Force

Communications

Throughout its existence, the Collection Development Sustainability Task Force has sought to prioritize transparency and bilateral communication with Bucknell faculty. Below are some of the most important resources we have used to share our motivations, process, and other aspects of our work.

Email from Kevin Gilmore, Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering and Chair of CLIR: New Initiative: Library Collection Development Sustainability at Bucknell
This email was sent to all faculty in early Spring 2021, introducing the task force and the general goals of the effort in investigating changing subscription models to confront some of the challenges in academic publishing.

Bucknell Faculty Approves Open Access Policy, 2011
This is an archived website (may take a bit of extra time to load) with the text of the open access policy approved by the Faculty of Bucknell in October 2011.
One-page introduction
This one-page introduction was shared with administrators and faculty before meetings the task force had with various stakeholder groups in Spring 2021 to share some broad background information about academic publishing and different models of both publishing and access.
Presentation for Library Reps meeting 4.8.21
This presentation was given to the L&IT faculty reps in Spring 2021 and goes a bit more-in depth into the effort, roles faculty can take in helping to shift the culture of access and publication in academic publishing.It also introduced this website as a resource and toolkit!
Update for Faculty Meeting 11/21
This brief update was presented to Faculty in Novemeber 2021 updating faculty on the work of the task force.
Pre-Update Overview
This document was shared with groups of faculty and administrators before meetings discussing the task force work, process, and current conclusions. This document was intended to refresh people's memories to allow for more productive and process-based discussions in meetings.
Fall update 2021 Slides
This slide deck was used as a baseline (sometimes altered based on time limitations in meetings) for the in-depth updates given to groups such as the Dean's Council, The College of Engineering Leadership Council, The College of Arts & Sciences Chairs meeting, the College of Management Chairs, and the L&IT Faculty Reps in late Fall 2021 and early Spring 2022.

History and overview of projects

In Spring 2021, the Collection Development Sustainability Task Force was launched, to explore the most cost-effective and equitable means of providing access to published information resources, to investigate alternatives to traditional publisher licenses such as open access, and to ensure the necessary support for teaching and research at Bucknell in a sustainable way.

In Summer 2021, we started analyzing our Elsevier "Big Deal" on a granular level. We found that roughly half of the titles in our "Big Deal" had ten or fewer uses per year and that over 2/3rds of the deal had a cost per use of $100 or more. This insight, in addition to our understanding of greater trends in publishing and conversations with other libraries that have unbundled their "big deals" led us to believe that, with investment in library services, we could meet campus resource needs without giving so much money to for-profit academic publishers.

In Fall 2021, we discussed our plans and new needs with Elsevier started implementing new technology (RAPID ILL- part tech part human) and human (search for a new ILL position) resources that will help us with this transition. We started meeting with faculty groups we met with initially in the spring (1 of those meetings scheduled for January 2022).

In 2022, we assessed our subscriptions with Sage and Wiley.

In 2023, we assessed our subscriptions with Oxford and Springer Nature and worked with the Collection Development team to consider what forms of assessment and evaluation to operationalize into the collection development team.