I have a question for you, Jeff -- using the formula, were there
significant amount changes from year to year in any given department's
budget? I've often wondered if the formulas really result in that since
I haven't had any experience with them.
Instead of a formula, I've been able to apply percentages equally to a
historical base amount for all the monograph funds and for all the
serials funds lumped. I've done occasional specific rebalancing based
on the changes with courses being taught (i.e. someone retires and the
department chooses to no longer specialize in gerontology or whatever,
while another program expands its offerings). If a department makes
major changes to their program, I figure the library should adjust in
sync. If no major changes, no major swings in funding other than what
is happening in the economy of the institution at large.
If you have Chemistry Serials and Chemistry Monographs funds split, you
can still decrease either one to maintain or increase the other keeping
it department based if necessary, but you also have the ability to add
up all the serials funds and all the monographs funds to make changes
broadly along those lines too.
One significant reason to separate fund-tracking of serials and
monographs is the differing inflation factors to apply each year. In
several libraries in which I've worked over the years, librarians and
faculty alike understood that the serials budget is really managed as
one pot of money, but that "attributing" titles to subject specific fund
codes facilitates accreditation reports and management reports for
faculty review of titles for perceived usefulness. It can also help
Collection Development review the balance between
science/humanities/social science areas to have each title attributed to
an area if not to a subject-specific code.
You might be interested in a presentation I heard at the 2007 Charleston
Conference, by Gayle Chan of Hong Kong University Library, about major
across the board changes with a focus on cost/benefit (pricing and
usage) plus function. They set all funds back to 95% of the previous
year's amounts and faculty or librarians submitted forms to justify why
they needed more and then increases were applied based on justified
need. Hopefully this is in the conference proceedings publication if
you want to know more.
Thanks,
Lauren
--
Lauren Corbett
Director of Resource Services
Z. Smith Reynolds Library
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC
Ph: 336-758-6136
Fax: 336-758-4652
-----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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> ACQNET-L_at_lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/acqnet-l
>
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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 - 17:12:45 EDT