In light of the increased cost of purchasing library materials in academic institutions in the UnitedStates and elsewhere, many institutions are canceling subscriptions to journals and databases fromcommercial and society publishers. This presentation will discuss the collection management policiesat the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). Examples will be given of how these recentpolicies are affecting teaching and research along with the innovative ways librarians are trying tocircumvent this difficult periodby the discovery and advertising of free resources, using payper view models, etc.Special emphasis will be given to resources in engineering and the physical sciences. For example, atUMCP, with a wellknown physics program (ranked #13 among graduate programs in physics by USNews and World Report, 2009), since July 1, 2008, faculty and students no longer have access toINSPEC, a premier physics database (UMCP purchased the INSPEC Archive and access to it willremain intact). This was a very hard decision and the effect will not be known immediately. EvenCompendex, a research staple for general engineering, is under heavy scrutiny! Will the free Scitopia,Google Scholar, and the like be a good substitute? Thus, based on a presentation that Nevenka Zdravkovska made at the ICoASL 2008, InternationalConference of Asian Special Libraries in Delhi, late November 2008 entitled, ‘Bibliographic Databasesin the Sciences and Engineering: Are They Going to Survive’, this paper discusses the advantagesand disadvantages of maintaining subscriptions to these Index and Abstract Databases. Are theyworth the money, are they being used appropriately and enough, or can they be dropped andsupplemented sufficiently and even comprehensively by other sources?Though some otheracademic institutions may be able to relate to this similar dilemma, there is no intent to generalize thatthey are having the same financial issues as experienced at UMCP.
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