In theory, the Brooklyn College Library has access to three categories of enrichment funds; in practice, money from these sources supports faculty and students' basic information needs–there are no enrichment funds. For more on this topic, see The 2003-2004 "Match" and The CUNY Student Technology Fee, below.
The funds generated by each year's CUNY/campus "match" are supposed to be used to enrich collections that support graduate study. However, steady erosion in Library spending power has meant that long ago this money became part of our base budget for collections, substituting for tax-levy funds that had melted away.
Likewise, Student Technology Fee funds were designed to add exciting new e-resources to our collection. However, the very first year that $100,000 in STF funds were made available to the Library, our budget was reduced by $167,000. The result? 65% of our Tech Fee allocation was diverted to renew existing e-products.
Alumnus Al Tanger made a bequest of the Library of $20,000 per year for ten years to enrich spending for journals. However, this year the Library had no choice but to use Mr. Tanger's $20,000 to meet the "match," rather than to enrich the collections.
The CUNY Student Technology Fee
The $100,000 per year the new Student Technology Fee contributes to e-resources has been the Library's semi-saving grace, as funds for collections have been slashed. While this annual sum was designed to bring new electronic titles to the students of Brooklyn College, the 2002-2003 budget cut jolted us from our innocent euphoria: instead, Tech Fee money is being used to maintain collections. Of the $100,000, about 2/3 has been spent to retain key collections; additionally, there is no provision for inflation. The following chart shows that Brooklyn lags behind other senior colleges in terms of Tech Fee funds allocated for library resources.
SCHOOL STUDENT TECH FEE $$FOR LIBRARY MATERIALS Baruch 218,000 Queens 154,000 City 147,000 John Jay 137,000 Staten Island 117,000 Hunter 105,000 Brooklyn 100,000