In the fall 2001 the University's Office of Library Services found itself $35,000 shy of the sum needed to renew centrally funded e-content packages. It was decided to cut spending for commercial document supply, in order to make up this sum and forestall journal cancellations. As a result, Brooklyn's budget for commercial document supply was reduced almost one-third, from $31,000 to $22,000.
How did we manage? We stayed within our allocation by obtaining 635 fewer items for our faculty and students than we had in 2000-2001 (1,031 items versus 1,666). Nevertheless, the Brooklyn College Library requested the highest number of documents among the CUNY libraries. We were followed by Hunter and then City.
The new budget constraints for commercial document supply mean that staff must use these services only for faculty requests, employing free or low-cost interlibrary loan for students' requests. Although this approach significantly increases the staff time we must put into interlending, it has allowed us to live within a reduced budget. These changes have been largely invisible to readers: processing student requests has slowed down, but students have been uncomplaining. Our budget for 2002-03 has been reduced again, to $20,870. (Research Services staff are diligent in checking the Library's e-journals database http://dewey.brooklyn.cuny.edu/eJFinder/ before requesting journal articles from document suppliers or other libraries; however, less than 5% of the requests we received were located in our full-text electronic resources.)