Libraries
The Libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance are aligned in the vision of uniting our separate collections into one collection, shared and fully networked: the BIG Collection. By this phrase we mean a holistic and comprehensive understanding of what a library "collection" is: not simply the things we hold, but our services; our people; our expertise; our technology; and our infrastructure.
In advancing this future of interdependence and excellence, we are guided by our North Star in everything that we do:
In order to advance a just, trustworthy, scalable & sustainable open knowledge ecosystem, make open, more equitable scholarship our lead purpose.
On these pages, you'll find more about the services, programs, and community that are advancing this vision in a principles-centered, mission-driven, values-aligned way.
ADA Title II & Libraries
Catch the webinar replay + slides from our August 27 event. Now posted on our Accessibility page.
Big Ten Open Books
A new model for open-access publishing—free, trusted titles from Big Ten university presses..
Shared Print White Paper
Explore the vision for a collaborative, distributed archive across Big Ten libraries.
CIC's Armstrong Presents at EDUCAUSE 2009
Scholars and researchers publish articles in journals both to share their work and to participate in the promotion and tenure reward structure, and libraries in turn, must buy back that published scholarship in the form of subscriptions, increasingly in digital form. The cost of journal subscriptions has long outpaced library budgets and the effect is that less scholarship is available to fewer people.
But if academic libraries consolidated their purchasing power, pooled their resources, and approached publishers collectively, Armstrong presented, the results could be transformational for both higher education and the public good as the end result would be more scholarship being available to more people.
Armstrong delivered her presentation with Jay Starratt, dean of libraries at Washington State University. The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference is the higher education community’s premier information technology event.