Collection Development Sustainability Task Force: Home

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.

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.