Breaking up the Big Deal?

This paper explores the methodology used to assess the value of a Big Deal package while inter-institutional negotiations were ongoing. Analysis was performed primarily with quantitative factors, including usage, cost, cost per use, and faculty citations. After identifying the highest and lowest performers in these categories, librarians were able to eliminate them easily from further deliberation. Then weighted scoring was applied to moderate performing titles. Weighting identified additional titles that could be sorted, leaving a smaller pool for title by title deliberation performed by a team of librarians, and a final pool of ‘must have’ titles to be collated and presented to administrative stakeholders.