Absolutely. We are in the process of doing this in our library. We
still have "departmental" allocations of book funds, but we have
librarian assigned as liaisons to each academic department. These
liaisons are taking on responsibility for coordinating collection
development for those disciplines/departments. They solicit
recommendations from the teaching faculty so those faculty members who
wish to be involved can continue to do so, but it falls onto the head of
the liaison to make sure we have enough recommendations to spend each
department's allocation.
It has worked well for us and I hope to have all academic departments
moved to this new paradigm within the next couple of years. Most
departments have been happy to be relieved of the burden of doing this
themselves.
And we have always (well, for thirty years, which is forever in this
business) kept the subscription allocation separate from the book
allocations.
Michael
W. Michael Bell
Assistant Dean and Head, Materials Processing
Lupton Library
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
423-425-2670
mike-bell_at_utc.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 1:02 PM
To: acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [ACQNET-L] Departmental allocations
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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>
___________________________________________________
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 - 17:12:07 EDT