Hi Lauren,
Thanks for your response. To answer your question, I've only been doing this job since last July, so I'm not 100% certain, but in looking over things from the past, it seems that the formula has not produced significant changes from year to year. In fact, I think that's the point of the formula. The major problem with that is that individual departments have changed significantly, and the formula hasn't kept up. If we change the formula to monographs-only, the idea is that it will get revised perhaps yearly to reflect shifts in the departments.
By the way, thanks to everyone who has responded to me, both on and off-list. I've learned a great deal and gotten some practical advice on how to proceed. Also, I like Kitty's suggestion (from an earlier email to the list) about ditching the formula and going with faculty requests. That's something that's crossed my mind as well.
Thanks again,
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)
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 1:10 PM
To: acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [ACQNET-L] Departmental allocations
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)
>
> _______________________________________________
> ACQNET-L mailing list
> 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 Thu Apr 08 2010 - 16:55:22 EDT