We've also used a formula for allocating departmental book budget
allocations for nearly three decades. (Serials have never been included
in this process here.) The understanding has been that faculty requests
would be processed automatically within the limitations of these
department budgets. Faculty participation has always been sporadic and
uneven although this system has given them a sense of ownership over the
budget. I'm thinking of making a drastic change next year by replacing
allocations with an invitation for faculty to submit whatever (book and
media) requests they need to support their teaching and research. I still
plan to determine and track allocation amounts in order to provide
internal guidance. My guess is that we will be able to fund all the
faculty requests and regain some flexibility and control over the
materials budget. What do you think??
> My library has for years had departmental allocations that are apportioned
> according to a formula. Each departmental fund is meant to cover both
> monographs and serials, with the resulting problems for many departments
> (especially in the sciences) of maxing out their budgets almost every year
> because of journal inflation and thereby having to cut titles.
> Departments have a great deal of input into what journals we keep. I'm
> interested in moving to a different model where all serials are on one
> fund, and cancellations are based more on usage.
>
> However, since our formula is based partially on average cost of a serial
> in a given discipline and size of the literature in that field, this would
> necessitate changing our formula to reflect something similar for
> monographs. Average cost of monographs in different disciplines seems
> easy enough to find; but I'm wondering how to capture the "size of the
> literature" part. It seems that a more important factor for monographs is
> the relative importance of monographs to the discipline, but I doubt
> whether that is quantifiable.
>
> Has anyone else developed the sort of formula I'm talking about here, or
> can otherwise direct me in pulling this together? I'm still a novice
> collection development librarian and am possibly overthinking all this.
> Any advice is welcome.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jeff Purdue
> Collection Development Librarian
> Western Washington University
> 516 High Street
> Bellingham, WA 98225-9103
> Jeff.Purdue_at_wwu.edu
> (360) 650-7750
> (360) 650-3954 (fax)
>
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> ACQNET-L_at_lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/acqnet-l
>
___________________________________________________
Kitty J. Simmons
Library Director Telephone: 951-785-2515
La Sierra University Telephone: 951-785-2402
Riverside, CA 92515 Fax: 951-785-2445
E-Mail:ksimmons_at_lasierra.edu
http://www.lasierra.edu/library/ Meet me at the Library!
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Received on Tue Apr 06 2010 - 14:09:10 EDT