January 12, 2021

UW Libraries Launches Wall Street Journal Pilot

The UW Libraries has begun a two-year pilot partnership with The Wall Street Journal. Current students, faculty and staff may register now to get free access to WSJ.com, the WSJ mobile app, podcasts, and educator tools now through December 22, 2022. Recognized as a leading source for business and finance, The Wall Street Journal also covers U.S. and world news, politics, arts and culture.

What happens after the pilot? 

During the two-year trial, UW Libraries will assess usage data to understand how this resource is used and if it serves specific user needs that are not able to be met with other resources. While we expect the WSJ will undoubtedly be a popular resource, the cost of access for this single source and other mainstream news websites like WSJ can be comparable to what a library might pay for access to hundreds of academic research journals or thousands of books and media.

Sustainability is always at the forefront of resource allocation. At the end of two years, the Libraries may continue with a paid subscription, or not — there are many variables to consider, and no guarantees. Therefore, it is important that users understand that this is a trial period and access is temporary. Robust usage data and a clearer picture of future UW budget priorities will provide guidance in the longer term.

News sources within libraries: changes and challenges

The prospect of a university-wide paid subscription to The Wall Street Journal is complicated and somewhat incompatible with traditional library collections economics. 

For as long as libraries have preserved primary sources, library patrons have made use of relatively few formats to get access to news, from paging through current daily newspapers on a stick to browsing microform reproductions on specialized reading equipment. In recent decades, newspaper articles became searchable on CD-ROMs and, more conveniently, on website databases — now the standard method for finding and retrieving news articles. Long before this new pilot began, the UW Libraries has been providing access to full-text reproductions of the daily print edition of The Wall Street Journal through ProQuest, an aggregator of news and journal articles. 

But as newspaper publishers have transformed the habit of news consumption from the printed page to dynamic and personalized digital content, news consumers have come to expect a higher level of richer and more interactive content that can’t be replicated by the text-only formats that most library databases provide. 

While libraries are still best positioned to provide centralized access to archived news content, current library databases and budgets are not ideally situated for facilitating direct access to news publisher websites given their inherently high cost. Single-source subscriptions, including the New York TImes, Financial Times and other news websites have not been feasible for many academic Libraries. (To be clear, the Libraries does provide text-only access to FT and the Times through newspaper database aggregators, just not the websites.) But with the right partnership and involvement of campus stakeholders, a sustainable funding structure is conceivable.

The WSJ opportunity 

Budgetary hurdles aside, the two-year WSJ pilot affords us a terrific opportunity to see what works and to understand the value of a direct subscription to a leading news source. As we begin monitoring WSJ usage and gathering user feedback, we will also communicate with UW departments and stakeholders to determine what funding sources may help to make the WSJ an affordable resource.

For now, though, I am encouraged by the already apparent enthusiasm for The Wall Street Journal at the UW. In just the first week of the program launch, more than 800 people registered for WSJ accounts. In the months and years ahead, library patrons in the Foster Business Library and in UW Libraries spanning the Seattle, Bothell and Tacoma campuses will have a unique opportunity to make the most of the free access to this major news source.

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