Principles
Timely access to research and learning content for the Cornell community is the Library’s first priority in the scholarly resources arena and a prerequisite for continuing to develop Cornell’s academic distinction, educational verve, and community engagement.
In support of this priority, we’ve drafted the following principles to guide our policy and practice:
- We at Cornell University Library develop collections for use by the Cornell community today and in the future.
- Collection development at the Library also supports collection preservation, and the availability of content beyond the Cornell community.
- Collection development at the Library benefits from the coordination of efforts with other research and learning institutions.
- Collection development at the Library seeks to make the best possible use of limited financial resources and takes into account all the costs of ownership and access (including acquisition, processing, storage, and preservation).
- The success of collection development at the Library is measured by regular quantitative and qualitative assessment.
- We are attentive to the multiple intersecting ways that our Library collection reflects societal histories.
- Our Library’s collection development principles are reviewed regularly to align with changing university priorities.
Funding and Expenditures
To meet the research and teaching needs of the Cornell community across the disciplines, our collections budget pays for access to a vast range of resources – text, images, data, and more in various electronic and physical formats. Annually, our collections budget is comprised of $13.2 million in appropriated funds and more than $3.5 million in restricted and unrestricted endowment funds, and gifts to the Library.
Licensing Electronic Resources
We subscribe to over a million ejournals, ebooks, and databases from thousands of publishers. They are licensed individually and in bundles, either directly or through one of many third-party aggregators or service providers. These licensed electronic resources amount to more than 70% of the Library’s annual collections expenditure of over $20 million.
Cornell University Library plans to unbundle it’s “Big Deal” package with publishing company Elsevier. Cornell licenses a considerable amount of online content from Elsevier, including the ScienceDirect journal collection. Stay up to date on our process through our online journal transition web page.