The libraries at Wesleyan are central to the teaching and research that faculty and students carry out every day. A crisis in our ability to purchase new materials is looming. We will be facing decreasing on-campus access to books and scholarly articles unless strong administrative leadership is exercised to maintain the collections at their current strength.
The facts are these: For the first time in recent memory, the University provided a 0 percent increase in the acquisitions budget for the 2006/2007 academic year and has further proposed 5 percent increases each year for the next five years. Journal subscription costs, however, have traditionally risen an average of 6-8 percent per year. Thus, the University has proposed to underfund the current collection. The freezing and subsequent underfunding of the acquisitions budget represents a fundamental change in the university’s approach to maintaining the library collection.
The library, in response to the imposition of these constraints, has implemented a plan which is outlined in some detail at: http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/sereview/subrevpro.html. The plan includes the following features: In 2006/2007 $53,000 in paper subscriptions were cancelled and the book budget was cut by $62,000. The library was able to retain online access to the paper subscriptions that were cut, but at the expense of new books.
For 2007/2008, the library is proposing an additional $70,000 in cuts to journal subscriptions (i.e., no paper or electronic access at all). This plan also involves a permanent shift of funds from books to journals, thus accelerating the recent decline in book purchases. Alternative plans offered by the faculty, which involve more modest cuts and a comprehensive review of the collections, have been rejected.
The library’s plan will have long-term detrimental impacts on our teaching and research missions. It will, for example, disproportionately affect students. Fewer current materials will be present or accessible on campus, and will be available only through interlibrary loan. While we have a superlative Interlibrary Loan Office, it can not provide the immediate access to materials that students often require.
There are, obviously, significant pressures that acquisition costs place on the university budget and we must be sympathetic to the challenges they present to the administrators who must manage them. We should, however, insist on the following:
1. The fiscal officers of the University must recognize the centrality of new acquisitions to the core missions of Wesleyan: teaching and research. The trends in journal costs are well-established and can be largely anticipated. The University should adequately budget for these increases and no longer treat library acquisitions as yet another cost to be minimized.
2. Faculty and students must be brought into the early planning stages of any program that will directly impact the academic mission, particularly with regard to changes in the library collections and how access to the scholarly literature is provided.
As we celebrate our 175 anniversary, we should remember that the library collections represent the greatest physical legacy that our predecessors have let for us. All of us, faculty, students, administrators, and trustees, have a duty to protect and enhance that legacy for those that will follow. I call on the administration to work with faculty and students to devise a long-term plan for managing the acquisitions budget that maintains appropriate access to scholarly materials.
Leave a Reply