Budget Reduction and Solutions

During the last couple years, many libraries have been facing budget reduction or budget stability in the best cases, while serials subscriptions, in print or electronic, have been rising sharply. Print books prices have increased too but in a slower manner. This fact implies that more money will be taken from the print books’ budget to cover serials subscriptions. This will eventually lead to a weaker print collection in the future if cuts decisions were made arbitrary. A plan is required in order to base selection decisions on it. The first step is to conduct a study in order to understand circulation statistics of books, usage of print and electronic serials, and usage of e-books, and to identify areas in the collection that do not support our curriculum. A survey can also be conducted to determine users’ preference for the formats, print or e-books, and what are the heavily used databases. Since single print journals subscriptions are more costly than those available electronically in packages, it is eligible to find duplications and overlaps between print and electronic journals and to discontinue subscriptions to print journals that are available electronically. This will save a good amount of money that can be used to select more books. Also, some print-only journals that are rarely used can be discontinued after consulting with faculty members and the needed articles can be requested through interlibrary loan. Concerning electronic journals subscriptions, it is highly recommended to rely more on consortia such as MEL for general databases since it is cost-effective, and to limit individual subscriptions to specialized databases only that are needed to support our curriculum. It is highly important to consult with many vendors before subscribing to a particular database since some databases are offered by different vendors but with lower prices. In addition, a “patron-driven” selection model is the best way to save money and ensure high usage for both print and electronic books. For print books, patron-driven model can be established by deciding either to buy or to borrow books requested through interlibrary loan. The price, publisher, and date are the main criteria for making such decision. In the electronic world, many e-books vendors provide the ability to add MARC records of their e-books to the library’s catalog, the library deposit an amount of money with the vendor, once the full-text of the book is requested by a user, its price will be deducted from the deposit and the book will be purchased by the library. By using patron-driven models the library can make sure that only books that will be used are purchased. This strategy will save a big amount of money usually spent on books that have never been used. It is also recommended that the library purchase e-books versions of text books since they are very expensive and highly used. E-books will guarantee simultaneous usage with relatively lower prices. Also, in some disciplines such as computer science, print books are expensive and their life span is very short since they become obsolete very fast, therefore some vendors offer e-books databases that provide books for couple years and replace them with newer editions one they are published. These databases will save the library a good amount of money and shelf space as well. Finally, a good approval plan is very useful since a fixed amount of money will be spent on books carefully selected and duplication will be reduced to a minimum. Also, the fact that books will be received shelf-ready will save the processing cost and time needed for books to be available on shelves.