Collections Budget Central
overview
The Libraries’ 2024/25 collection budget is $3.6 million. We use that money to purchase and provide access to a robust collection that includes millions of books, hundreds of databases, and over ten thousand current journal subscriptions. But every year, the prices of journals, databases, and books go up. If we do not receive $100-150 thousand in new, additional money we can’t pay for that inflation, and we consequently have to reduce book budgets and/or cancel database and journal subscriptions.
Funding levels for the Libraries vary from year to year, but the impact on collections usually conforms to one of three scenarios:
- Major budget reduction – The Libraries perform a thorough data-driven analysis to create a draft cancellation list of the least cost-effective resources. The list is then shared for faculty and campus-wide review, and any needed changes are made before the cancellations are implemented.
- Flat budget – We renew most resources, but we flag for intensive review any resources with an annual inflation increase over 5% and any resources with poor cost per use.
- Large budget increase – When the collection budget increases by more than the inflation rate we have money to spend on new additions. To help identify the most needed content we maintain a list of faculty suggestions.