Tomissa Porath - Ripon College Days
Students writing research papers on campus might not have one of their favorite research outlets to use in the near future.Due to the library budget not increasing and database subscriptions rising 6 to 8% each year, the library staff is considering ending a subscription to a lesser used resource.
"The library budget has remained pretty much the same for over a decade and, in order to meet yearly price increases, we have to consider cutting resources or risk being wildly over budget," says Elizabeth Hunt, resource services librarian.
To balance the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, the library has been looking at cutting one of the on-line research databases.
"In planning for the future and attempting to balance the budget the library is looking at canceling our subscription to Lexis-Nexis," says Hunt.
Although budget is a large determinant in eliminating Lexis-Nexis, Hunt explains that other variables are included in that decision.
"In addition to budget concerns we consider usage statistics, resource coverage, departments affected and faculty input," says Hunt.
Lexis-Nexis is an infrequently used research search engine that has been going up in price in recent years.
"Database vendors rarely keep rates static, prices go up each year," says Hunt.
The rising costs have been slowly affecting the college, yet students have been utilizing the resources the college has been making accessible, making any resource cut tough for the library.
"The Ripon community logged over 25,000 sessions in our EBSCOhost databases last year," says Hunt.
Students may have to get used to conducting more research online because of how some subscription companies have been making changes to what they offer.
"As more and more publishers rely on electronic resources, some foregoing print altogether, I imagine more research will be conducted through online resources," says Hunt.
Although more research is conducted online, students on campus have still been utilizing the options the college makes available.
"I know some students are in the habit of using things like Google Scholar but library databases are the quickest way to find reliable sources suitable for college-level research," says Hunt. "Students have a great amount of access to online, full text content through the library.
"The companies that have been decreasing their print resources have also affected the library, along with the college determining to discontinue multiple print journals that were infrequently used but still accessible through online databases.
"Our collection of print journals has decreased," says Hunt. "Print titles were cut as publishers provided online full-text access to content."
