Executive Summary
Academic libraries have struggled for many years with unsustainable cost increases for scholarly resources. As a result, managing the Library's collections requires careful analysis of usage data and curricular needs. Based on our ongoing analysis, the Library cancels a small number of subscription resources each year. Due to increasing budget and inflationary pricing pressures, the Library anticipates the need to cancel subscriptions in FY25-26 that exceed our typical level of cancellations.
This guide provides information on the planned cancellations, the ongoing resources we will continue to subscribe to, and invites input from the campus community on this process.
Background: Budget Pressures on Library Collections
There are significant issues with the overall marketplace for scholarly resources, whereby consolidation of scholarly publishing companies (e.g., Reed-Elsevier, Springer, Taylor and Francis) has led to increasing profits for those publishers, with margins nearing 40% in the case of Reed-Elsevier. Price increases for electronic resources have outpaced the consumer price index (CPI) for many years. As a result, libraries increasingly confront the need to curtail collections based on rising costs.
Though academic libraries have resisted these price increases by negotiating group and consortial discounts, demand for electronic resources is high and continues to grow. CSUSM's library collections budget has not had significant base budget increases for many years, while costs and demand for costly electronic resources have risen considerably.
The Library has employed a number of strategies to cover this deficit, allocating any savings elsewhere in the Library's budget (e.g., salary savings from unfilled positions) to cover shortfalls. However, these strategies were never meant to cover these shortfalls indefinitely without additional budget increases.
CSUSM Library Collections Structural Budget Deficit
The University Library's budget for collections has remained flat for many years, despite consistent disproportionately high inflation and increasing prices for subscription resources.
This means that for several years, the Library collections budget has not completely covered the increasing costs of resources, and the Library has had to cancel subscriptions or purchase less each year in order to balance the budget. The Library has also absorbed general cuts to our overall budget (4% in 2021-2022) in addition to this year's 3% cut (2024-2025), further eroding our purchasing capacity for collections.
Anticipating further potential reductions in 2025-2026, the Library needs to take steps to equalize our collections commitments with available funding.
This graphic shows the projected structural deficit (32%) of the collections budget for fiscal year 2025-2026. The ongoing deficit and projected additional budget constraints will result in a likely cut amounting to approximately $350,000 (see FY 25-26 Planned Cancellations).
Over recent years, the Library has covered unfunded subscription costs through a combination of salary savings from temporarily unfilled positions (e.g., retirements) as well as emergency funding received during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What will be cancelled?
- These cancellations have not yet been made but are highly likely in the next fiscal year. We have focused on cancelling resources from large consolidated academic publishers, many of whom have been overcharging libraries for many years. Put simply, these proposed cuts are the logical outcome of unacceptable price increases by academic publishers over many years and a flat library collections budget.