Funds for Collection Building

BUDGET FOR COLLECTIONS, 2004-2005: In each of the two previous academic years, University holdbacks on campus budgets cost the Library $167,000. This year we were delighted that there was no holdback, although budget pressures caused the College to reclaim about $40,000 from the Library's budget (May 2005). In 2004-2005 planned spending for collections totaled $996,581:

$805,600 Tax levy funds

$ 37,000 State funds for the annual "match"

$ 37,000 Library gift funds toward the "match" + $2,500 from the fall faculty campaign

$ 16,981 State collection development grant

$100,000 Student Technology Fee

Here, the operative word is "planned." Library budgets are "rolling" budgets, spent over the course of the entire year as book and journal bills arrive, many of them at year's end. Owing to the sudden and unforeseen year-end budgetary "reclaim," we are unsure what invoices were paid and which were caught in the May freeze/give-back, to be carried forward to 2005-2006. In any case, we know we face a shadowy but real burden next year, forced to pay some 04-05 bills from what is predicted to be a very weak 05-06 budget. While we were anticipating a challenging 2005/06,we did not expect the ax would fall so soon.

It is easy to see how dependent we have become on Student Technology Fee money, which funds many electronic journal packages. Another vital source of support for e-collections is the University, with Brooklyn's share of CUNY's $2,000,000 valued at $146,213.
MONOGRAPHS VS. JOURNALS: In the spring 2004 Faculty Council's Committee on the Library urged us to increase spending for books, even if this came at the expense of funds for e-resources and journals. In the fall, Associate Librarian for Collection Development Susan Vaughn examined our recent spending ratios and investigated how other libraries allocate their budgets. The 2004-2005 slightly-better-budget-picture allowed us to divide our spending 15% monographs, 85% journals/e-resources, which seems consistent with spending patterns in other large academic libraries.

FUNDING FOR E-RESOURCES: The sources of funding for electronic resources are very diverse; they include the Library's tax levy budget, CUNY spending, the Community College Incentive Program (CCIP), Library gift funds, the State's New York Online Virtual Electronic Library (NOVEL), and the Student Technology Fee. It is important to understand that reductions in any one of these categories affect the total picture. For example, while Student Technology Fee funds were meant to increase the number of products to which the Library subscribes, owing to decreases in our tax levy budget more than half of Tech Fee spending supports existing resources.

THE ANNUAL CUNY/STATE "MATCH": Since its inception, the campus allocations for the annual "match" have been based on FTE graduate students. With a new University librarian on board (September 2004) the Council of Chief Librarians' Collection Development Committee has been reconsidering the "match" formula, with the possibility of moving to a blended model that considers both FTE graduate students and the cost of materials in various disciplines. It is unclear as yet how Brooklyn would fare—certainly we have fewer doctoral students than many other campuses, and we seem to have fewer flagship programs.

: In the fall 2004, we mounted an online faculty giving campaign; it yielded about $2,500. The small size of this sum (to be used toward the annual University "match") is of great concern, because the "match" has become critically important to us. While the funds generated are supposed to be used to enrich collections that support graduate study, steady erosion in Library spending power has meant that long ago this money became part of our base budget for collections. The only solution to a more successful campaign is that the College give us access to more names–a larger pool of prospective givers. We look forward to the arrival of a new Vice-President for Institutional Advancement in the fall, 2005.

Special credit goes to AIT for designing and building our online giving site, "Give to the Library."

PHD in CLINICAL AUDIOLOGY
Beginning September 1, 2005 CUNY plans to offer a PhD in clinical audiology. After meetings with local faculty and librarians at the other campuses that will support the new degree (Hunter and the Graduate Center), Susan Vaughn developed a funding proposal showing the cost of supplying all three campuses with the appropriate journal titles. It is now the job of the University Librarian to obtain the needed funds.