While public libraries may be best known in their communities for providing free access to the latest bestsellers, a central part of the public library mission has always been to ensure that everyone, regardless of means, can access high-quality information resources. Public libraries have helped to level the playing field by providing access to current and reliable information that is not easily accessible outside the library ecosystem. In this way, public libraries have been essential to the health of our democracy. But as budgets shrink and demand for popular eBooks goes through the roof, it’s a mission that may take a backseat to other funding priorities. Fortunately, the growth of Open Access (OA) publishing over the last decade makes it possible for libraries to actually deliver more premium content without incurring increasingly-high content subscription costs.
OA publishing is growing at exponential rates, and many of the scholarly articles and eBooks that libraries have traditionally subscribed to are now freely available, with licensing designed to ensure more equal access to the latest research. Unpaywall.org has identified more than 34 million OA items--a preponderance of which are produced by leading academic publishers. These publishers have not lowered editorial standards to support OA publishing. In fact, it’s not uncommon for the most impactful research to be publish openly, and libraries of all types can take advantage of OA resources to expand their collections. The challenge for libraries is in vetting the content and making it easily discoverable.
This is where CloudSource OA can help. CloudSource OA is a new content platform from SirsiDynix that delivers vetted, quality open access articles, eTextbooks and eBooks in a seamless and intuitive way to end users. It can supplement or even replace current content subscriptions: enabling the library to deliver more content for a fraction of the cost. Libraries can add tens of millions of items to the library discovery experience and save money in the process. Libraries interested in learning more can sign-up for a product overview and free collection analysis at www.cloudsourceoa.com.