A proposal made by the Finance Office to cut the University’s library acquisition budget from an annual increase of five percent to three percent is currently being considered by the administration. If passed, the measure would begin next fall and continue for ten years.

The acquisition budget covers books, subscriptions—which includes periodicals and journals—and special collections.

“This was done in consultation with many people on campus including the faculty and student groups,” said Vice President for Finance and Administration John Meerts. “You have to cut somewhere and this was one of the cuts that seemed reasonable. We’d love to be at five percent, we’d love to be at 10 percent…it’s not something that anyone would like to do [but] reduction in the endowment has caused us to have to select budget cuts.”

Although a formal vote on the University’s budget will not take place until the Board of Trustees meet in May, approval of the proposal is almost certain. The acquisition funds have already been cut by 10 percent from what they were originally set at for this year.

Interim University Librarian Patricia Tully noted that because the cost of periodicals increases each year, the subscription section is consistently the most expensive part of the budget.

“Those subscription [prices] tend to go up between six and eight percent a year,” she said. “They have been a bit better since the economic downturn, but we can’t expect that to continue.”

In order to compensate for the expected annual increases in the cost of periodicals, the book section of the acquisition budget will be the hardest hit. This year alone, the books budget experienced a 47 percent cut.

The library has begun looking at cost-saving measures.

“It was an interesting process,” Tully said. “We took a really hard look at how people use our books and how many books we’ve been buying. We broke it down by subject and to a certain extent by format.”

The library has begun to closely monitor the usage of individual books. Subjects that consistently overspend on books used infrequently will receive fewer allotted funds.

“We were trying to be extremely careful to shift our allocations so that each subject would be equally supported,” Tully said. “We did not decrease any budget down to zero.”

Although there will be fewer physical books, the library has expanded its use of online and electronic volumes, a cheaper way to obtain sources.

“Publishers give us a subscription package,” Tully said. “We’ve recently acquired an eLibrary. Instead of paying for that out of the book budget, we’ve been paying for it with the subscription budget. That helps us to balance and to make sure we aren’t cutting into the book budget too much.”

The staff has been in contact with Coutts Information Services, a vendor of electronic books. Coutts proposed a pilot program that would provide the University with individual books free of charge until they are read more than once. This way, the library will not be required to pay for books that are not used.

The library is also looking to expand its use of the CTW consortium with Connecticut College and Trinity College. Through this program, University users are able to access online card catalogs from all three institutions and may obtain books through a delivery service.
“What we’re hoping to do is minimize the negative impact,” Tully said. “It has accelerated our direction at looking at innovative ways to look at books and electronic resources [and] to buy things that people are actually using.