TRLN to Forgo the Big Deal
-- Library Journal, 1/14/2004
In another blow to the big deal, the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) announced this week that it would not be renewing its bundled deal with Elsevier. In a memo sent to the faculties of TRLN members Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, TRLN officials said that the decision not to renew their deal for content published under the ElsevierScience imprint followed "months of unsuccessful negotiations" with Elsevier. "We recognize that reduced availability of the many prominent science and technology journals published by Elsevier will impose an inconvenience on faculty members and students accustomed to the current arrangement. We believe, however, that the negotiating position adopted by Elsevier leaves no other option." The TRLN deal, which offered access to approximately 1,300 journals, expired on December 31, 2003. The announcement not to renew comes weeks after the faculty and staff senates at the North Carolina State University approved a resolution opposing the practice of bundling content and essentially authorizing the library not to renew its bundled deal with Elsevier.
The TRLN libraries join Cornell and Harvard in not renewing their bundled deals--and repeated a familiar refrain in explaining their decision. TRLN officials said they hoped to "regain and maintain control over library collecting decisions," and to better "manage overall costs," specifically, keeping Elsevier expenditures "consistent with materials budgets that have not been increasing at anywhere near Elsevier's annual inflation rate." In December, NCSU Head of Collection Management Suzanne Weiner said that NCSU's current Elsevier deal, negotiated through the TRLN, cost the library roughly $1.4 million annually. That translated into roughly 15 percent of NCSU's $9.2 million collections budget. Under that arrangement some 38 percent of the libraries' serials budget went to Elsevier, representing 11 percent of NCSU's journals. The decision will now test faculty members' resolve--as well as Elsevier's. According to the memo, each "TRLN library will now make individual arrangements for Elsevier journal access on its own campus." That means "the loss of electronic access to the body of titles shared throughout TRLN, resulting in a reduction in access to 400-500 journals per campus." It remains to be seen how faculty will react to the loss of access. TRLN officials, however, stressed in the memo that "universities must respond to this economic crisis of the state of scholarly communication."
