Worst Case Scenario

Julie S. George, EKU
Clay Howard, EKU

Abstract

In recent years, an unsustainable economic model has emerged in many academic libraries—skyrocketing journal subscription costs coupled with diminishing materials budgets. What if vendor prices for journal subscriptions rise so fast that our budgets just can’t keep pace? Could we continue to meet the needs of our patrons if we had to cut EBSCO and other expensive aggregator databases? And for those of us charged with teaching good research skills, how would instruction change? In this interactive session we will tackle the above questions, present some open source alternatives to subscription databases, and discuss “vendor-free” information literacy instruction.