Greetings,
As we begin our annual struggle with budgets, we confront the following
questions once again and hope that people on the list can offer some
wisdom. Understand that the bulk of the budget is distributed to
departments and programs based primarily on history tempered in the past
few years by a formula.
1. Are your newspapers generally paid from departmental funds [Le Monde
from French, etc.] or from the library general fund and why? We have some
paid by the library general fund and some paid by departmental budgets.
Some departments want the library general fund to pick up the cost so
that it won't be counted as part of their annual allocation. In many cases,
they want obscure newspapers or ones that will only be used by their
faculty or students, so we wonder if the budget should reflect this fact.
In other cases, the newspapers seem to be of interest to a mixed
population.
2. In the budget allocation process, if you refer to a formula in an
attempt at equity, and faculty are counted in their home departments
rather than in the programs in which they might also teach, how can poor
little programs (usually interdisciplinary in nature) ever get ahead? We
factor in number of faculty (double weighted), enrollment, majors, and
cost of materials in the field in our formula. The programs always
suffer. It doesn't make sense to count faculty in both their home
departments AND in programs. Has anyone else dealt with this issue?
Thank you for any help you can provide.
Regards,
Mia
<*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>
<*> Mia Brazill <*>
<*> Head of Acquisitions & Collection Dev.<*>
<*> Smith College Libraries <*>
<*> Northampton, MA 01063-0001 <*>
<*> phone: 413 585-2922; fax: 413 585-2904<*>
<*> email: mbrazill_at_sophia.smith.edu <*>
<*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>
Received on Tue Jun 02 1998 - 09:04:07 EDT