The Current Budget Environment and Its Impact on Libraries, Publishers and Vendors

ABSTRACT The economic downturn and continuing budget concerns have libraries, publishers, and vendors making strategic changes as they seek to provide a high-level of services at a time when uncertainty continues to dominate planning and development. Creative thinking has become the norm as organizations seek to challenge long-held views and uncover and implement needed changes. Librarians, publishers, and vendors have all experienced a period of assessment, strategic review, and reaction as a result of the continued evolution from a print-based model to one dominated by electronic dissemination of scholarly information and the new role eBooks promise to play. This article addresses some of the important actions taken by librarians, publishers and vendors to cope with changes forced by both the economy and budget pressures, by the continued migration of scholarly resources to electronic formats, and by current and planned eBook activities and new eBooks models. It explores patterns in library content selection and spending trends, publisher prices and pricing models, as well as vendor strategies and challenges.