Collection Development Sustainability Task Force: Home

Please reach out to your department's librarian or taskforce co-chairs,  Jason Snyder and Eloise Stevens if you:

• Want to discuss how these changes may impact your department and your classes.
• Are experiencing challenges with accessing resources.
• Want to learn more about different forms of OA and resources for access and publication.
• Want to create or revise information literacy assignments or sessions to support students in confronting issues of information privilege.
• Have questions-we like questions!

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.