Last Revised, September 30, 2008

Seventy percent of PASCAL’s Statewide Electronic Library funding is allocated to its electronic resource licensing program.* Here is analysis of the electronic resource licensing program as it existed in 2007-8, prior to the 90% reduction in funding from the state.

• PASCAL’s annual licenses to 33 databases provided access to millions of articles and reports in over 13,000 periodicals, especially peer reviewed research journals in core academic disciplines, technical & business reports, and health sciences resources.
     
• Central Licensing has been extremely cost-effective: Since its launch in 2004, PASCAL’s statewide electronic resource licensing program has brought in $7 of value for every $1 spent. As we’ve added resources, our “multiplier” has increased each year. So in FY 2007-8 every $1 returned $8.67 in value. To take one example, we estimate that it would cost Francis Marion University at least $230,000 annually to replace the $27,000 PASCAL is spending for electronic licensing on its behalf. These are annual expenditures, on which South Carolina’s 300,000 students have come to rely on.
        
• These expenditures affected institutions dramatically! PASCAL levelled the playing field for smaller and mid-sized academic institutions. Northeastern Technical College students, for example have had their base periodical resources increase by a factor of 150!
          
• Licensing core materials such as Science, Nature, or LexisNexis Academic frees institutional funds at research institutions to license sophisticated research materials and thus supports the state’s drive for economic excellence in fields such as engineering and medicine. For example, when PASCAL licensed LexisNexis, Clemson was able to license Inspec, a major engineering database that had previously been out of reach. In FY 2007-8 PASCAL supported licensing for the three research institutions to the tune of $343,612, worth $2.9 million in value. This unlocked library funds to pursue excellence. With the budget custs absorbed by PASCAL, this fiscal year, the research institutions will need to make tradeoffs that will reduce South Carolina's overall knowledge-base.
  
  
• Thanks to PASCAL’s electronic resource licensing program, South Carolina’s nursing education programs had one of the most competitive packages of information resources in the nation -- for one acadamic year. Most of these resources will be need to be cancelled in January 2009. 

Everyone won:

Students and faculty had more of the tools they need to learn and compete in the global knowledge economy;

State resources were leveraged to the maximum extent through collaboration;

Our institutions became better partners in economic development.

PASCAL’s electronic resources represented an extremely cost-effective investment!

*The other 30 percent supported the rapid delivery program (PASCAL Delivers).