WiLS Weighs in on MLA/EBSCO Exclusivity

On June 26th, 2018, Barabara Chen of the Modern Library Association sent an open letter to MLA International Bibliography subscribers. This letter was an announcement that as of January 1, 2019, MLA International Bibliography would be available exclusively via EBSCO and EBSCO Discovery Service. This trend toward consolidation and exclusivity is troubling to us at WiLS. We believe it runs counter to the best interests of our members

For that reason, WiLS has joined our colleague consortia around the world in drafting a response letter to the MLA requesting that they reconsider this decision. Not all libraries, and certainly not all WiLS members, use EBSCO Discovery Service. This decision dramatically reduces the value of the resource for those libraries. We’ve already seen potential subscribers choose not to buy the resource because of this change. We’ve heard no response to the letter yet, but will post an additional update when we do.