Library Materials Budget Reduction

	Library Materials Budget Reduction
	Journal Cancellations
	FAQs
	The Crisis in Scholarly Communication
	What Can Faculty Do?
	SHERPA

 

This website provides current information for the University of Notre Dame community regarding the Libraries' efforts both to maintain a balanced materials budget and to meet the information and research needs of the University's students and faculty during the current difficult economic times.

OVERVIEW
The University Libraries materials funding has seen a decrease in purchasing power for the past three years. While much of this is due to inflation, particularly in journal costs, the recent decline of the dollar against other currencies and the Euro, specifically, has exacerbated the situation.

Following two years of no increases in funding for the library materials budget, the university cut 5% of its funding for the University Libraries as a whole. While this seems extreme, the Provost did in fact protect the Libraries in so far as possible. The non-academic units in general received cuts of 7%. In addition, endowment income was decreased by 3.5%. Annual serials inflation of about 10% means that flat funding years are essentially heavy cuts in materials costs, and a year with a 5% cut translates to something more like a 15% cut in the acquisitions budget for journal subscriptions.

Balancing this budget meant cancelling journal commitments that annually escalate in price by about 10 percent due to inflation. The Libraries have undertaken a number of budget commitment reduction projects since 2002.

• We cancelled an estimated 6% of journal commitments in Spring 2002
• We cancelled the print versions of the publisher journal packages, e.g. Elsevier, Kluwer, and Springer, in favor of retaining the digital format in Fall 2002.
• And we carried out another major cancellation project in Spring 2003.

These cancellation projects have resulted in decreasing our excess commitments. Unfortunately, we still have an over-commitment of approximately $250,000 based on current price estimates. The university is helping us to manage this for FY 2003/04 with one time funding. They are also seeking ways to allocate add-on funds for FY 2004/05. Clearly the University Administration understands that this is a significant problem that hinders faculty and student learning, teaching, and research.

To limit journal inflation and provide a broad range of scholarly literature for the sciences, we have joined several other libraries in subscribing to publisher journal packages. For example, the Elsevier package provides 1,200 journals to the desktop with inflation capped at 5% a year for five years.

Recent journal cost inflation projections for FY 2004/05 are running at 10%. Within the present budget situation, the Libraries will continue to evaluate available funding and resources, particularly in light of University priorities. We will also pursue new funding sources and use these funds in the most effective way possible.

For questions or additional information, please contact your subject specialist, and/or Gay Dannelly, Associate Director for Resources and Collection Services.

For additional information, see the Library Materials Funding Status Report presented to the University Committee on Libraries in March 2003.

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