Albatross: Rolling on a sea of data

Big deals and journal package incentives are an increasing reality for academic libraries, yet the solutions for evaluating these package scenarios in a timely, cost-effective manner are few. The proliferation of these offers requires the examination of numerous and complex questions. There is a need to know the utilization and strength of a package, the inflation costs for various titles and packages, and the ability to identify cost trends. A team of librarians at Virginia Tech created a solution for addressing these concerns and for managing their journal data by designing and developing an in-house database. Albatross, named in reference to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is a database created to gather journal usage data and cost data in a central environment where the data can then be queried to use in return-on-investment analysis and journal package assessments.