In an effort to mitigate the effects of repeated budget reductions, inflation and the weakened Canadian dollar, the library has found that it needs to reduce base collections expenditure. After a great deal of analysis and consideration, we have deduced that the cancellation of Business Source Elite and Academic Search Premier, both EBSCO aggregator databases, will have the least adverse impact on the Ryerson community at large. Access to these resources via Ryerson Library will cease as of March 2016.
In 2011, the library introduced the Search Everything feature, which is a tool that allows users to search across several databases at once. Consequently, we have seen a marked decrease in Business Source Elite (-63.7%) and Academic Search Premier (-72.8%) searches over the last four years. With significantly decreased usage coupled with annual increases in price averaging 3-4%, the library has determined that we are no longer seeing value for this investment.
We understand that you may have concerns about loss of content. Please speak directly to your subject librarian to discuss alternative modes of access. This is not a decision that was made in haste or without careful examination of evidence to support it. Faced with the current fiscal reality, it is a decision that we feel will have the least negative impact on our large and diverse community’s information needs.