UMass Global Library Policies & Reports

The UMass Global Library enhances the UMass Global educational experience by facilitating seamless access to research material that supports the university’s mission. Librarians manage this process by evaluating, selecting, and maintaining information resources needed in the university’s curriculum. These guidelines lay out the principles by which material is selected for inclusion in the library’s collection and models how the library’s budget allocation is spent. The library’s collection management goals are to:

• Provide fast, convenient, and cost-effective access options for needed material.
• Maintain access to core library collections within the allocated budget.
• Facilitate discovery and access of information sources not available immediately available through the library.
• Promote student and faculty work.

To achieve these goals, librarians continually assess new products and offers from relevant providers of information and perform annual collection reviews to determine which resources should be retained, upgraded/downgraded, acquired, or removed. While librarians are ultimately responsible for building and maintaining the library’s collection, they work collaboratively with the UMass Global community to identify material that best supports the continually evolving university curriculum. Librarians make collection management decisions based on their knowledge of the library’s budget and collection as a whole, expertise with tools and resources, and understanding of the work of the university’s community of users.

Page Contents

• Collection Development Values
• Adding New Material to the Collection
• Assessment of Library Resources
• Cost of Library Resources

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Collection Development Values
These values apply to library collections and their use at UMass Global:

• The UMass Global Library is committed to intellectual freedom as noted in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights.
• The UMass Global Library abides by copyright laws of the United States and emulates ethical use of resources and the principles of academic integrity.
• Purchased material should be accessible in terms of format, availability of assistive reading, and general Universal Design principles.
• In balance, the library collection should present diverse viewpoints and support current as well as historical models of research and scholarship.
• As appropriate to the educational mission of UMass Global, librarians will market and promote open access resources so that students will have access to research material, including their own work, even when they are no longer matriculated.
• To the extent that it is advantageous, the library will join consortial initiatives for product discounts and resource sharing.
• As an online-only library, the library maintains flexibility by tending toward an “access” model of collection development vs. an “ownership” model. 

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Adding New Material to the Collection
The following general criteria are used when considering whether to add a resource to the collection:

• Relevance and importance of the subject matter to the university’s curriculum and educational goals.
• Depth and breadth of the resource as compared to those already in the collection.
• Quality of the resource including level of scholarship and reputation of the author, publisher, and other producers of the material.
• Discoverability, usability, and accessibility of the material.
• Availability of an institutional license.
• Total cost including start-up fees and annual maintenance fees.

Consideration is given to the essential resources of each discipline and the size of the population being served, so that programs with a relatively small number of faculty and students are not disadvantaged.

As an online-only library, the UMass Global Library acquires only resources available in electronic format. This includes but is not limited to scholarly and non-scholarly periodicals, eBooks and eBook chapters, digitized primary and data source collections, and streaming resources.

 

Faculty and staff are encouraged to participate in collection development through regular consultation with a librarian and by submitting requests for library materials using the Purchase Request Form. Requests for resources that cost more than $500 are evaluated annually during the budget enhancement period. Because they are subject to potentially unpredictable price increases, requests for new subscription-based resources that require a long-term financial commitment are carefully evaluated by way of a free trial and feedback forms. Any requested subscriptions that are not added during a current budget enhancement cycle are retained on a wish list for review in subsequent fiscal years.

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Assessment

Periodic evaluation of resources is an element of collection development necessary to ensure that the library’s materials remain relevant to the university’s needs. As a natural part of collection maintenance, librarians may occasionally add and remove materials from the collection. These decisions are made after close examination of relevant factors that include:

• Relevance to curriculum and the research and teaching needs of the faculty
• Costs and impact on the library’s budget
• Usage and turnaway statistics
• Interlibrary loan requests
• Faculty purchase requests
• Available offers proposed by vendors and consortia
• Duplication of material and availability of open-access alternatives
• Discoverability and accessibility of material

A subset of the collections will be assessed each year. Certain core collections that are critical to disciplinary studies may be exempt from annual reviews of resources.

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Cost of Library Resources
There are great costs associated with providing access to academic research material. Many library resources are provided only by for-profit companies, though regardless of provider, the cost of collecting, digitizing, hosting, and maintaining the integrity of online journals and databases continually increases. Librarians are constantly striking a balance between containing costs and providing access to needed research material. Some factors that have the most significant impact on the library’s budget include:

• New resource start-up fees
• Ongoing maintenance fees that increase annually
• Requests for new resources
• Projected price increases over a 3 to 5 year period
• Costs related to making resources discoverable and accessible as close to the point of need as possible
• Professional development for library staff related to maintaining, marketing, and teaching use of library materials

The most significant factor that librarians must continually contend with is annual, and often unpredictable, price increases. Annual increases in journal and database costs typically exceed general inflation. In their Five Year Journal Price Increase History (2018-2022), EBSCO (a major supplier of information products) reports that journal subscription prices for academic libraries increased by nearly 20% during that time period. The 2023 Serials Price Projection Report from EBSCO and Library Journal’s Periodical’s Price Survey 2022 projected increases of between 2% to 5% for journal subscriptions and packages in 2023. UMass Global subscription renewals increased by as little as 2.5% to as much as 10% between 2022 and 2023.

Librarians use a variety of strategies to contain costs while maintaining access to needed material. These include participation in the SCELC consortium which negotiates more favorable pricing on members' behalf, analyzing use data to identify no-use and low-use subscriptions which may no longer be needed, utilizing open access material where feasible, and balancing the cost of interlibrary loan services with that of subscriptions.

Faculty will be consulted when the library is considering making changes to available resources.

Please direct any questions about this policy to askalibrarian@umassglobal.libanswers.com.