Budget pressures in the current economic environment are forcing some community hospitals to close their libraries, severely decreasing or eliminating access to vital information and resources. Libraries in most academic health centers are also facing severe cutbacks resulting from declining state support, declining clinical revenues, decreased gifts and endowments, and increased competition for a smaller number of research grants. A recent AAHSL survey found that many academic libraries had mid-year budget reductions in the current fiscal year, and that nearly 70% are expecting budget cuts for the coming year, some of which could be 10% or higher. In many cases, these are permanent cuts to library budgets, and, with few exceptions, libraries will have to reduce collection budgets as part of their cost-saving strategy....
The situation for health sciences libraries is complicated by the fact that the cost of STM (scientific, technical and medical) journals has risen disproportionately higher than other fields, and certainly higher than the vast majority of budget increases in health sciences libraries....
Comment. Note that the ARL statement, which AAHSL and MLA support "in principle", says that
...Libraries serving research organizations are increasingly receptive to models that provide open access to content published by their affiliated authors in addition to traditional subscription access to titles. This kind of model can form a bridge from subscription models to models incorporating author-side payments....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
