Big Deal Analysis

Data of Books and Databases spending were gathered along with

total library spending starting from AY 2006-2007 up to AY 2012-2013.
Analysis was based on the book The Big Deal and the Damage Done in
an attempt to find problems on the increasing reliance on databases
rather than books which affects fields of study that depend on books,
long-term collection maintenance and library flexibility.
Figure 1 shows actual spending of the library. It can be seen that
spending on databases has been increasing a little faster but it
correlated to the increase in total spending as well. The growth trend of
databases is synonymous with the growth of database spending but it
is already seen that book spending has been steadily decreasing over
the years. However, this graph is misleading because total spending
masks other differences. In order to actually see the change in
spending in all of these areas, Figure 2 was constructed to show the
percentage change in spending. Spending has not been constant and
there was also no trend that can be observed when figures are
compared with previous year figures. Although, it is clearly shown that
there is a big jump on database spending from 2006 to 2007 and from
2009 to 2010. Meanwhile, there was a big drop on books spending
from 2008 to 2009 and from then on, books spending has decreased
based on the negative percentages and it only became positive in
2012. In order to analyze this further, Figure 3 shows the percentage
change in spending for all three areas with the 2006 as the base year.
The big jump for database spending is clearly shown on this graph
wherein it reached more than 200% increase in database spending
between 2006 with 2011, showing that the library tripled their
spending in 5 years. And in this graph, it is clearly shown the growth of
database spending showed a significant increase whereas book
spending has not been growing at all, showing only negative
percentages. Book spending started to decrease in 2009 and the trend
continued to go down for the succeeding years. On the other hand,
total spending has slightly increased over the years that support the
growth in database spending but it clearly indicated that books arent
prioritized anymore in the past few years and the focus shifted to
databases. The results are alarming because as mentioned earlier,
there are many fields of research that strongly rely on books and we
dont have data yet to ensure proper utilization of the databases
purchased. According to the book, dependence on this only provided
short-term good but compromised solving long-term problems. Metrics
should be implemented in order to utilize spending on databases and a
proper strategy in the acquisition of library materials that would lead to
long-term sustainability and improvement.

Appendix
Figure 1
140,000,000.00
120,000,000.00
100,000,000.00
80,000,000.00
60,000,000.00
40,000,000.00
20,000,000.00
0.00

Books
Databases
Total Spending

Figure 2
80.00%
60.00%
40.00%
20.00%

Books
Databases

0.00%

Total Spending

-20.00%
-40.00%
-60.00%

Figure 3
250.00%
200.00%
150.00%
100.00%
50.00%
0.00%
-50.00%
-100.00%

Books
Databases
Total Spending