The University of British Columbia

The UBC Library collections standard is increasingly shifting towards purchasing new resources in online format wherever possible. This has been the norm for our journal collections for some years and the transition is now spreading to our book collections as well.

The Library provides access to more than 125,000 purchased and open access ejournals from over 250 databases and publishers.  Our ebook collection now exceeds 261,000 titles.

In our LibQual survey last spring, users told us that this is what they want and need, and we agree that a higher level of service quality is provided with electronic resources.  A recent study published by the Association of Research Libraries indicates that online use of library-provided journals exceeds print use by a factor of at least ten.  Analysis of our own collections use supports this conclusion.

The dramatic cut to our collections budget for fiscal year 2007/08 has led the Library to review our resources ever more carefully.  Duplication and overlap has been reduced wherever possible and hard decisions about cutting some resources are being faced.  The biggest challenge is finding ongoing funds for materials that have price increases beyond the inflation rate every year.  Equally difficult is finding funding to support new titles, programs and platforms upgrades.

Effective January 2008, print subscriptions for over 500 titles were not renewed in favour of providing the online format only. The list of titles is available here.   In some cases, the advance to online has afforded us access to a deeper archive of online content than we hold in print.  The library will continue to transition titles as we are able to negotiate stable access with publishers and our consortia partners. 

Your comments are welcome. Please send them to JoAnne Newyear-Ramirez , Assistant University Librarian for Collections & Scholarly Communications.

Information regarding the Transition to previous Online projects: 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007