Murphy Library News

By Pamela Cipkowski and Katherine Fish

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically impacted life at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. Murphy Library had to manage the transition of many of our services to an online environment, a number of our personnel working remotely, a building closure that impacted access to our physical collection and more. In addition to these challenges, we received news last fall of a 20 percent cut to our collections budget.  

In light of the fact that Murphy Library has not seen an increase to its collections budget since before the year 2000, this budget cut was especially challenging. The collections budget is used to purchase books, e-books, journal subscriptions, databases, DVDs, streaming video and other library resources. While our budget has remained flat over the years, costs for these resources, particularly journal and database subscriptions, have continued to rise. Journal subscriptions now account for the majority of our collections budget. We knew we wouldn’t be able to meet this cut without making some tough cancellation decisions.  

With that in mind, we began a meticulous examination of our journal subscriptions. Our decision-making process involved soliciting feedback from faculty as well as evaluating other factors such as curriculum needs, resource costs, current and historical use, and whether we had access to the content through other online sources.  

Many a day was spent locked away in a conference room, physically distanced and fueled by slowly dwindling piles of chocolate, as we pored over data and agonized over the decisions we needed to make. “Did you dream about spreadsheets and statistics again?” was the familiar refrain each time we met. When not in the conference room, work-from-home days resounded with the familiar incoming Microsoft Teams call notification. Discussions continued for hours on end.  

As part of this undertaking, we created a Journal & Database Cancellation Project webpage to share our decision-making process, solicit feedback and communicate our final cancellation decisions. We also reached out specifically to faculty to solicit their input in a number of ways, including via a faculty-wide survey on journal subscriptions and communication with individual departments. In addition, we held many discussions with publishers and vendors to negotiate more favorable pricing where possible. This helped reduce the number of cancellations we had to make. 

While the process wasn’t an easy one, in the end we were able to meet the budget reduction, and we gained a lot of valuable insight along the way. Budget cuts to our library collections affect everyone who uses our resources — faculty, staff, students and the public — and the library takes the responsibility of meeting those cuts seriously. We appreciate all those who provided helpful input during this process.