Winter 2024 Subscriptions Update: How to Share Your Input

The 2023-24 subscription review list—a list of the journals and databases under consideration to be cancelled this year, as well as new journals and databases under consideration to be purchased—is now available for student, faculty, and staff input! Your feedback about the titles on this list will provide critical context for decisions to cancel, retain, or add subscriptions this year.

As a reminder, the Libraries will not have to make any subscription cancellations this year. Nevertheless, we are continuing a deliberate, strategic, annual review of all journal, database, and electronic resource subscriptions to ensure that the university’s subscriptions portfolio remains dynamic and relevant–especially in the context of Western’s curriculum, growth, and emergent needs.  

Students, faculty, and staff can visit the Libraries Subscription Review webpage to see the subscription review list, more information on how the list was generated, and instructions on how to submit input. Those who are interested will have until Sunday, March 10 at midnight to submit individual feedback. Faculty, staff, and students may also continue to submit requests for new subscriptions, which will feed into next year’s review.  

 In the meantime, the Western Libraries Subject Teams are available to meet with any interested department, institute, or group, to answer questions and hear feedback. We hope people will take every opportunity--individual or departmental--to communicate their needs. 

 In early spring, the Libraries will examine the feedback and explore the possibility of voluntary subscription swapping. We will continue to communicate updates via the Subscription Review site; the Library News and Western Today; department chairs; faculty governance and other leadership groups; all-faculty emails; and the Libraries’ Subject Teams. Any subscription “swaps” will be announced by the end of spring quarter. If you have any questions, please reach out to the Libraries’ Subject Teams or contact the Libraries’ Collection Services division.