NASIG 2019

Over the past several years, the trend in libraries has been a preference for ownership over subscription when it comes to ebooks acquisitions. Vendors and aggregators offer many different models to help streamline and simplify acquiring ebook including frontfile purchases from the vendor, as well as DDA/PDA and a variety of evidence-based plans. With each purchase model, though, come different technical services workflows required to manage not only the plans, but the purchases, in addition to cataloging and maintaining the holdings. There is also the unknown costs per year, though deposit accounts make it easier to budget and manage the cost.
Subscription resources, however, provide one workflow as well as a known cost component. In addition to this, the maintenance of the collection, including additions, deletions and weeding out-of-date resources, is basically done by the vendor.
In this session, two librarians will discuss pros and cons of both options (including acquisitions, cataloging and maintenance) and present the argument that for small technical services departments, perhaps subscription is a better model than ownership, when available.