Individual Article Purchase: Catching the Wave of the Future, Or Getting Pounded on the Reef

For many libraries, particularly small to midsize academic libraries, journals have placed significant strains on the acquisitions budget. For fiscal year 2012–2013 the Volpe Library at Tennessee Tech University faced a significant materials budget shortfall. Rather than simply cutting titles to cover the shortfall or asking the administration for more money, we concluded that the existing system of acquiring and delivering information packaged in journals was not sustainable for us. Therefore, we embarked on a yearlong process to develop a different way of providing article information that would more efficiently use the budget that we have. The process we have developed focuses more heavily on purchasing individual articles, using the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) product Get it Now, in an attempt to maximize the impact of our budget resources. This paper describes the issues prompting the change and the process that was used to prepare a plan to meet the budget challenge. It also includes a description of the final plan, the implementation of the plan and early results that are available on the operation of the new process.