NCSU Faculty Takes Hard Line on New Elsevier Deal
-- Library Journal, 12/8/2003
Both the faculty and staff senates at the North Carolina State University have approved a tough resolution opposing the practice of bundling content and essentially authorizing the library not to renew its bundled deal with industry-leading STM publisher Elsevier. Like a number of research libraries, NCSU is currently negotiating a renewal of its Elsevier package, which expires on December 31. The resolution blasts the practice of bundling journals and explicitly charges the NCSU libraries with maintaining "strong and flexible control over the state funds entrusted to it." NCSU Head of Collection Management Suzanne Weiner said that NCSU's current Elsevier deal, negotiated through the Triangle Research Library Network, costs the library roughly $1.4 million annually. That translates into roughly 15 percent of NCSU's $9.2 million collections budget. Some 38 percent of the libraries' serials budget goes to Elsevier, representing 11 percent of NCSU's journals. In late November Cornell University decided not to renew its deal with Elsevier. Harvard and the University of California system have also publicly indicated their preference not to renew their deals.
Like those libraries, Weiner said that NCSU's major issue was the inflexibility of the bundled deal: "[Bundling] is becoming a real problem. Research libraries cannot afford to pay for content that we don't want, and cannot afford to be locked in long-term. It's not good fiscal management, and it doesn't give us a good return on our investment." Perhaps the most striking element of NCSU's resistance is the level of faculty engagement. Weiner said the NCSU library committee, composed of faculty, staff and students, invited NCSU librarian Susan Nutter to make a presentation about the Elsevier negotiations--the result of which was the resolution. The resolution affirms the libraries' ability to "decline highly restrictive offers such as such as those proposed by Reed Elsevier for its ScienceDirect online product." The resolution passed unanimously, so if the library refuses a bundled offer, Weiner says, it will do so with full support of the university community. Still, Weiner stressed that NCSU has not made a decision to renew or to cancel, and is continuing to negotiate with Elsevier.
