TFrom: John Maxstadt <jmaxstadt_at_tamiu.edu>
Please excuse cross-postings on other lists.
We are a small (4,000 students) public university with one new PhD program
and two more (in other subject disciplines) coming in the next three or
four years. We have over twenty different master's programs already in
place, but our understanding is that a PhD program is something entirely
different in terms of need for library materials support (books, journals,
databases, and serials). The PhD program we have now has received a lot of
attention and a fair amount of outside funding, some of which the college
was willing to share with the library - once. But that one-time money has
apparently dried up and cannot be used to support subscriptions to journals
or databases or to update the book collection every year. The two other
programs being developed will probably not generate any outside funding at all.
What do other small public universities do regarding materials budget
allocations to PhD programs, particularly new PhD programs? How do you
weight the needs of a PhD program compared to the needs of much larger and
better-established master's and undergraduate programs? The programs are
or will be very small, with less than ten students each for the foreseeable
future (three or four years). But these students will still need a full
range of research resources. We are of course looking at document delivery
and pay-per-search as alternatives to purchase and subscription, but these
options put an increased burden on the students to know what they want (at
a bibliographic level) without the traditional and electronic tools to
access those materials.
Do you have special funding mechanisms for your PhD programs? If so, do
they provide reliable funds useful for continuations, or just one-time
money? If you fund all programs from the same materials budget, how do you
weight the allocations for colleges and departments with PhD programs? How
do you make sure that money is being spent specifically in support of the
PhD programs? When it comes time to face reaccreditation, how do you
demonstrate previous library support for new PhD programs?
Please respond directly to jmaxstadt_at_tamiu.edu. Thanks in advance.
Received on Sat Mar 19 2005 - 02:14:15 EST