A Message from the Vice Provost on the Library, Museums and Press 2025-2026 Budget

Dear Colleagues,

As we continue working through the University’s financial realities, I write to share some updates about the Library, Museums, and Press budget for the 2025-2026 academic year.

We continue to weather substantial cuts to both staffing and operating funds while striving to maintain the quality of programs, services and resources you rely on. Despite our best efforts, we can no longer absorb the relentless cost increases to journal and database subscriptions. These costs have been rising between 5% and 9% annually since the pandemic, while our collections budget has remained flat (which, in essence, is a decrease in our purchasing power). This unsustainable trajectory forces us to make strategic choices about how we allocate limited resources.

What’s Changing

Effective January 1, 2026, we will cancel our subscription to the Wiley journal package [list forthcoming]. This decision follows the same path we took with Elsevier in 2021 and represents a deliberate move toward more sustainable collection management. By canceling these expensive packages, we can continue to provide access in alternative ways while better supporting the full range of disciplines across campus and redirecting funds to areas of greatest need.

Continued Access to Wiley Articles

We are committed to ensuring you have access to the Wiley articles you need. Students, faculty and staff will continue to have access to all Wiley journal articles published through the end of 2025. New articles, published in 2026 and later, will be available using a combination of interlibrary loan and a pilot of Article Galaxy Scholar (AGS), a fast and convenient service that provides immediate access to individual Wiley articles. AGS delivers articles in real time via email, typically within one to two minutes. AGS provides a practical, cost-effective way to obtain specific articles on demand without maintaining costly blanket subscriptions. Although there is a cost for this service, the Library, Museums and Press will absorb the costs during this pilot as we assess its long-term feasibility and budgetary impact.

Our Strategic Direction

We continue to reshape how we build our collections to better serve current needs:

• Purchasing books based on direct requests from faculty and students rather than speculative buying
• Leveraging open-access materials wherever possible
• Maximizing our partnerships with other libraries to broaden access through resource sharing

Other Ways to Access Content

In addition to Article Galaxy Scholar for Wiley articles, several tools can help you access articles:

• Google Scholar
• Unpaywall
• Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
• Direct outreach to article authors

Scholarly Contributions Continue as Usual

Your scholarly work remains entirely your own. You’re free to publish in any journal, serve as an editor or reviewer wherever you choose, and pursue your research without any limitations. These subscription changes affect how we access content, not how you contribute to it.

We’re Here to Support You

We recognize this shift requires some adjustment in how you access certain materials. Our liaison librarians are available to help you navigate the changes, develop new strategies, identify alternative resources, and answer any questions. If circumstances allow for additional funding in the future, we may reconsider subscriptions that, for now, we are unable to provide directly.

Please contact me, Erin Daix (Associate University Librarian for Acquisitions and Collections Services), or your liaison librarian with any questions or concerns.

Supporting the University’s teaching, research, and service mission remains our top priority. I appreciate your understanding and partnership as we work together through these necessary adjustments.

Sincerely,

Trevor A. Dawes

Vice Provost for Libraries and Museums and May Morris University Librarian