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Description of Process and Cancellations

The Libraries is preparing to potentially cut $750,000 from the collections budget.  The cut does not impact the Law Library and the School of Medicine Library.  The potential cuts will incorporate a variety of strategies including making cuts to print and electronic monograph purchases, print and electronic journals and online databases.  

Journal and database review

The process of the collection review and the decision-making process will include:

  • Consultation with faculty, students and staff regarding resources they consider most critical to teaching, learning and research.
  • The three-year price history of the resource including inflation increases.
  • Three-year analysis of the usage of the resource. 
  • Citation behavior (for disciplines that have sufficient information) over a three-year period.  The citation measurement applies only to journals.  The Libraries can gather information on the number of times the University of Nevada, Las Vegas authors have not only cited a journal, but how often they have published an article in a journal.
  • Is a journal indexed and available full-text in an online database?
  • Is an alternative version of a resource available for free, via open access, in an institutional repository or other method?
  • Ability to quickly and cost-effectively obtain an item through Document Delivery or other method.

Print and electronic monograph cuts

Cuts to print and electronic monograph purchases will largely be focused on an approval plan review. An approval plan automates purchases of newly published books, using defined parameters to identify materials of relevance and need for UNLV Libraries. By reviewing the plan, and reducing the amount of materials automatically acquired the Libraries expects to save $200,000 dollars. Use patterns and the disciplinary importance of monographic materials will be used to determine how to reduce the approval plan. The Libraries will undertake this review using the expertise of liaison librarians.

Distribution of collection cuts

From a discipline standpoint, the collection cuts will reflect the percentage of budget allocation and cost of resources. These cuts will be distributed across monographs, journals and databases taking into account the disciplinary importance of each resource type:

  • 50% from sciences and engineering
  • 30% from social sciences
  • 20% from arts and humanities

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