Budget allocation for 2024-25
As result of the university’s budgetary challenges, the library’s budget allocation has been reduced for 2024/25. Thankfully, the impact of the reduction will be partly contained since the library received a lift to its base budget to address the effect of US exchange and inflationary increases to library collection costs. After this initial raise to sustain current resources and services, the library’s reduction will have to reduce its budget by eight percent.
For more details on the overall library strategy to address the reductions, see the message from the Dean of Libraries about the Library Budget for 2024/25.
Decision-making process
While this is a significant reduction, the library aims to minimize its impact on research and teaching and learning as much as possible. The library has developed a plan to meet the target reduction to collections expenses. The plan intends to protect departmental fund lines by focusing first on reviewing resources currently paid from general library funds.
This spring, several library groups will identify titles that are candidates to be considered for cancellation. Drawing on expertise of liaison and collections librarians and other staff, these groups will assess the relevance of library subscriptions to current and emerging trends in research and teaching and learning, as well as their cost and past usage and potential alternate sources to equivalent or similar content. The library will consult with faculty as needed and share a shortlist of potential cancellations with faculty for their input before finalizing cancellation decisions.
Most of the cancellations will be announced concurrently once the selection work is completed. However, decisions on a few resources will need to be finalized earlier because of their renewal dates. Cancellation details and dates will be added to this page and on their catalogue record and access page. Liaison librarians will also share updates with departments as they become available when relevant.
Timeline
updated June 3, 2024
- February to mid-March: develop plan, gather recent usage statistics
- Late March: convene resource review groups
- April: prepare review lists
- May to July: review resources and create cancellations shortlist
- liaisons consult with faculty as needed
- some of the resources with summer renewal dates may need to be cancelled
- Late July: share cancellations shortlist for faculty input
- Mid September: Finalize cancellations decisions
- Late September: share final list
Titles selected for cancellation
Resource | Date access expires | Reason |
Africa south of the Sahara [Print] | 2024-05-04 | Print source with sustained very low usage. The economic, political, statistical and directory information it provides is largely available through online sources. |
American National Biography | 2024-07-01 | High cost per user. Use of reference resources such as biographical dictionaries is in decline. |
Bibliographie internationale de l'Humanisme et de la Renaissance | 2024-05-04 | Print source with very low usage. Individual issues and articles available through Interlibrary Loan. |
CARMA Video Library | 2024-08-28 | Very low use and high cost per use. |
Choice - Current Reviews for Academic Libraries | 2025-01-01 | Primarily a tool for librarians; reviews available as part of GOBI (main system used for ordering books). |
Europa World Year Book | 2024-07-23 | Print/Online source with sustained very low usage. The economic, political, statistical and directory information it provides is largely available through online sources. |
Erudit Cultural Magazines |
2026-01-01 | Low use and high cost/use. The entire archive is available in open access with a three-year embargo. Individual issues and articles available through Interlibrary Loan. The Library will maintain subscription to Erudit Scholarly Journals. Update Dec 2024: The Library decided to renew for another year (ending Dec 31, 2025) as a completion of an ongoing multi-year agreement. Renewing for a new term after this date will be reviewed in fall 2025. |
Far East and Australasia [Print] | 2024-05-04 | Print source with sustained very low usage. The economic, political, statistical and directory information it provides is largely available through online sources. |
Futures and Indices: Trade Data | 2024-09-02 | Low use and high cost/use. |
HathiTrust Membership | 2024-01-01 | High cost and low use. HathiTrustT provides free access to public domain content and the majority of the top titles viewed via HathiTrust are in the public domain so they continue to be freely accessible. Anything else is available via Interlibrary Loan. The library will continue to monitor HathiTrust’s work and reconsider membership if circumstances change. |
International journal of project organisation and management | 2025-01-01 | Extremely low use and high cost/use. Individual articles available through Interlibrary Loan. |
The International who's who [Print] | 2024-05-04 | Print source with very low usage. Information on notable people worldwide included in this reference books series is largely freely available through online sources. |
John Johnson Collection | 2024-04-01 | No use in recent years. Faculty that had used this collection several years ago has completed their project. |
Keesings World News Archive | 2025-01-01 | Very low use and high cost/use. |
LinkedIn Learning | 2024-06-01 | Significant cost increase in the last 10 years and high cost per user. Although not as conveniently packaged, some comparable content is available for free or via other resources that the library provides. |
Le Monde [Print] | 2025-01-16 | Available online in Canadian Newsstream (2001-present). |
New York Times [Print] | 2024-10-01 | Content duplicated in Factiva, NexisUni; cost/timeliness of print subscription delivery is not adequate nor effective. The digital subsctiption cost would represent a six-fold increase to the current cost. |
Springer All Subjects Collection ebooks frontlist | 2025-01-01 | For several years, the library pre-purchased Springer’s entire ebook frontlist for the coming year. Analysis of the usage of those titles reveals that more than half of them have had no views, even after being available for a few years. 60% back to dept lines for subject librarians to use in title-by-title selection from this publisher. |
Times Colonist (Victoria) (2011-Recent) | 2025-01-01 | Content duplicated in Factiva and Canadian Newsstream and/or freely available online. |
Vancouver Sun (2011-Rec) | 2025-01-01 | Content duplicated in Factiva and Canadian Newsstream and/or freely available online. |
Water policy : official journal of the World Water Council. | 2025-01-01 | Open Access Journal. Subscribe to Open (S2O) model includes author fees waivers but no SFU authors have published in recent years. The library will continue supporting the OA initiatives of the World Water Council by maintaining the subscription to the Journal of Water and Climate Change, another WWC S2O journal in which SFU authors have published. |
Work : a journal of prevention, assessment & rehabilitation. | 2025-01-01 | Low use and high cost/use. Individual articles available through Interlibrary Loan. |
Comments and questions
- Mar González Palacios, Associate Dean of Libraries, Collections & Content Strategy
- Liaison librarians