Against The Grain - The Podcast

Audio from the 2020 Charleston Library Conference, presented by Michael Levine-Clark, Dean of Libraries, University of Denver; Jason Price, Research and Scholarly Communication Director, SCELC, and John McDonald, Director, Product Management, Analytics, EBSCO Information Services.  Faced with unexpected double-digit budget cuts and ever-increasing costs for journal packages, many academic libraries are finding it necessary and/or expedient to unbundle their big deals. Determining the relative value of these packages is not easy, since it requires an understanding of how reduced access will impact users now and into the future. Enter Unsub, a tool designed by researchers to model future library costs based on current patterns of availability and use within each package. Unsub allows librarians to make informed decisions about which titles to keep and which to cancel by identifying alternative access via backfile ownership, open access, and cost-effective use of interlibrary loan (ILL). However, without a suffi