Our aim is to provide high quality resources for research, instruction, and study. We collect electronic resources that support a variety of needs or disciplines.
Resources are reviewed annually to evaluate their cost per use and to determine if they remain relevant to our curriculum and campus community. These resources increase in price each year even when a budget line does not. Sometimes resources must be cancelled to preserve our budget (if a resource has too great of an increase in price) or to respond to budget cuts. In other cases, a resource is removed due to low use or in favor of a new resource that better meets demonstrated needs.
Resources in our collection that are paid for by the UW System or Badgerlink change for similar reasons. Individual titles are also on occasion removed from a subscribed collection. This guide will publicize these changes as they are finalized or made known to us.
We remain committed to providing these electronic resources to students, faculty, and staff. Our priority is to support their studies and research. Electronic resources make it possible for us to offer library materials at every moment of the day and from any place in the world that our campus community chooses to be.
Questions:
Why was a resource cancelled?
Please see the blue cancellation tab at the top of this page for information on a specific resource. A list of our basic selection criteria is also listed at the bottom of the page.
How can I request a journal that was part of a cancelled package or request a new electronic resource?
Please email erm-cdl@uwrf.edu to make a request. We will contact the vendor for pricing. If the resource's pricing fits within our budget, the Library Liaison for your subject area/program and the Library Director will be consulted to determine how the resource fits within our collection development priorities.
Why do titles get removed from an electronic collection/database?
If you're a regular user of services like Netflix or Hulu, then you understand well that electronic collections are not static. Changes are made due to expiring agreements, changes in publisher, etc. These collections change often, especially our film collections like Films on Demand and Kanopy.
Sometimes publishers give us advance notice so we can publish these changes, but unfortunately this is not always the case. We will make an effort to update this guide as these changes are made known to us. If you have any questions about how long a resource will remain available or plan to use a streaming film in one of your courses, please use email erm-cdl@uwrf.edu and we can check expiration dates with the vendor.
Cancellation and renewal decisions are made by librarians and the Library Director. We use a variety of criteria to evaluate our collections and prioritize subscriptions. These include:
-Cost per use
-Usage trends for a resource
-Price increases
-Use of the resource in courses/how the resource supports courses
-Balancing needs to make sure all Colleges/departments are represented in our collection
-Licensing
-Ability to provide off campus access to a resource, including access for our study abroad students
-Legality/Requirements (Sometimes a vendor's terms violate UW System requirements or state law-an example of this would be non-disclosure agreements related to subscription costs.)
-Does a new resource better meet our needs?
-Is the vendor properly maintaining this resource? Is the vendor making a good faith effort to minimize downtime, technical problems, etc.?
-Is this resource available at a lower cost from another vendor?
-Feedback from faculty/students - this one is very important to us!