Budget Reduction Frequently Asked Questions
Every department at the university has a library subject specialist who would be happy to discuss any of your concerns. In almost all cases, the liaison is also the person responsible for managing the collections budget for that discipline. General questions may be addressed to Kerry Scott, Head of Collection Development.
- What is the timeline for the current budget reduction process?
- What is the dollar amount of the reduction?
- What are the guiding principles when reducing expenses?
- Are cuts only in journals or will databases and book acquisitions be cut as well?
- How are titles being selected for cancellation?
- When will journal cancellations go into effect?
- Are all disciplines subject to the cut?
- How does the Library calculate deficits?
- Isn't everything available freely online?
- Are the Open Access movement and UC's eScholarship repository helping to control costs?
- What else is The Library doing to influence publishers to control costs?
- Can the Libraries save money if it purchases only online journals?
- Will we always have access to materials we license rather than purchase outright?
- Isn't the California Digital Library (CDL) still saving us money?
- Is CDL also reducing expenditures?
- Isn't the Collections budget protected?
- Why can't the Library take money from salaries or equipment or other expenses to relieve the deficit in collections?
- Can't we use endowment money to cover the deficit?
- Do faculty research grants help to fund Library resources?
- What can an individual faculty member do to help reduce the cost of journals?
- Can faculty donate personal copies of their subscription to the Library?
- Do we have information about the use of individual titles in print?
- Do we have information about the use of individual titles online?
- When the electronic version of a journal is canceled, do we still retain electronic access to the years/volumes that we subscribed to before the cancellation?
- How can I get access to titles once they have been canceled?
- Can I donate my start-up funds funds to help the library meet its budget shortfall?
Budget Reduction Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the timeline for the current budget reduction process?
The budget reductions will occur over two years, beginning July 1 2009.
» Budget Timeline
- What is the dollar amount of the reduction?
Given the information in hand today, the two-year cumulative effect is that the Library must reduce expenses by 14.5% or $1.9 million from our FY 2007-2008 budget. As approved by the EVC, approximately $780,000 of the FY 2009-2010 cuts will come from the collection budget. Additionally, rising materials prices and rising inflation rates compound the financial outlook, forcing a need to cut collections expenditures by approximately $1.0M from our 2008-2009 collections budget.Given the statewide economic situation, the state and campus budget decisions are being tracked daily. The reductions will have to be adjusted accordingly. It is possible further cuts will occur if the Library's budget is reduced in the coming years. On a systemwide level, we are also engaging in a number of cost saving measures related to shared journal licensing which may help us realize savings in the coming years.
- What are the guiding principles when reducing expenses?
- Use available funding to provide ongoing reliable access to information resources to support research, teaching and learning.
- Preserve an appropriate balance among disciplines and user groups.
- Maintain an appropriate balance between print and digital; serials and monographs; and new formats as they arise.
- Remain flexible enough to respond to new research areas and purchase new resources.
- Actively seek alternate sources of funding and use such funds to purchase important resources when the opportunity arises.
- Leverage our relationships with the California Digital Library (CDL), other UC's, and other cooperative collecting partners to secure the best prices possible.
- Collaborate with the UCSC community to make the best decisions for our campus.
- Are cuts only in journals or will databases and book acquisitions be cut as well?
All resources are under consideration during these budget cuts. Databases are under review and some will likely be cut. Some initial reductions have been made to the Library's book approval plan and departmental discretionary funds will see reductions as well. Due to advance notice required for journal cancellations, however, the journal cancellations will not be realized until fiscal year 2010-2011.Librarian subject specialists will work to ensure that the balance achieved at the end of the second year matches the ratio most useful to each discipline.
- How are titles being selected for cancellation?
Library subject specialists consider a variety of criteria as they consult with faculty, students, and other users about potential journal cancellations. Factors include: cost per use, availability elsewhere, impact (as identified through citation analysis), availability of indexing, and whether or not the Library already has it in another format (e.g., electronic).
- When will journal cancellations go into effect?
We are using FY 2009-2010 to identify candidates for cancellation. Journal cancellation lists must be finalized and reported to publishers by July, 2010. Savings from the cancellations will be realized by January 2011 with these savings carrying forward into future years.
- Are all disciplines subject to the cut?
The cuts will be applied to all funds across the disciplines.
- How does the Library calculate deficits?
We are comparing permanent allocations of funds from campus against recurring collection costs.
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- Isn't everything available freely online?
No. In fact, most online resources used by scholars are available only through subscriptions and licenses for which the Library pays.
Many disciplines continue to rely on print books and other non-digital formats — also paid for by the Library.
- Are the Open Access movement and UC's eScholarship repository helping to control costs?
The Library is monitoring developments in a variety of alternative models for scholarly publishing including open access and digital repositories. The existence of these alternatives, when provided outside the normal publishing infrastructure, have indeed put pressure on publishers to change, if not their actual charges, at least their thinking. Many publishers are themselves now offering an "open access" option, but they are charging a hefty fee to authors to do so.
Institutional digital repositories also provide information free to the reader, and some repositories like UC's eScholarship also provide support for peer review and author services. Uptake by authors, however, has been slow.
- What else is The Library doing to influence publishers to control costs?
UC Libraries launched a campaign asking publishers to cap or reduce prices and to reduce the number of new products they market. See UC Libraries Open Letter to Vendors (PDF). The UCSC Library has encouraged librarians to work with vendors to reduce their renewal costs.
- Can the Library save money if it purchases only online journals?
We are moving to digital resources largely for their ease of use anywhere at any time. While switching to online-only subscriptions eliminates some costs of processing print materials (e.g., receipt and processing, shelving, binding, circulation, stacks maintenance), new costs are created (licensing, cross-resource linking, maintaining and troubleshooting access problems).
As both libraries and publishers experiment with non-print dissemination of material, we are seeing many different business models. Not all publishers allow libraries to only subscribe to their online products (some give online for free with a print subscription; some only allow subscriptions to digital if the print subscription is maintained). For publishers who do allow libraries to go "digital only," price savings can be reasonable and beneficial, while others offer only minor reductions in cost.
- Will we always have access to materials we license rather than purchase outright?
In making the decision to subscribe to online-only resources, the Libraries will evaluate whether there is a reliable archiving model such as CLOCKSS and/or Portico.
- Isn't the California Digital Library (CDL) still saving us money?
Cooperation among the UC's to license electronic resources has been the biggest boon to our budgets over the last 10 years. Not only does CDL have a modest budget that is put directly toward resources benefiting all 10 campuses, the contracts that CDL has negotiated have been some of the best and most ground-breaking in the country. That said, almost all publishers continue to increase costs annually — and this inflation is not covered by The Library's funding.
- Is CDL also reducing expenditures?
Yes. As a part of the UC-wide reductions, CDL received an $1.1M permanent cut to the operations budget (about 11%) and had 2008-2009 end of year expenses that hadn’t cleared in June “swept” by the UCOP Budget Office. This meant an additional $800,000 in cuts to UC-wide collections for which one-time commitments had been made but had not yet cleared the system. Additionally, multi-year reductions to the CDL budget have forced the ten campuses to assume responsibility for subscriptions to resources such as abstract & indexing databases that had previously been paid for by CDL. Examples of indexing and abstracting databases include Academic Search Complete, Biosis, and PsycINFO.
In the second phase of the Library's collection reduction process, we will undertake a review of all licenses facilitated by CDL on our behalf. Due to the magnitude of the Library's budget cut, we will need to eliminate some subscriptions as a result. This process will be repeated on a regular schedule to ensure we are keeping our consortial agreements in balance with campus needs for locally held, unique resources.
- Isn't the Collections budget protected?
Over the last several years, the campus has protected the collections budget against campus-wide cuts, while asking the Library to takes its share of cuts to our operations budgets. Even in these years, no new funds have been available to cover annual inflation. The magnitude of the current cut, combined with last year's 6% budget cut which was absorbed by the Library's operations budget, leaves the Library with no other option than to have the collections budget absorb a large portion of the current budget reduction. The need to reduce continuing commitments in collections -- mainly journal subscriptions -- is in large part a direct result of the gap between the rate of inflation and the funding available, particularly for scholarly journals in scientific, medical, and technical fields and in some areas of the social sciences, such as business.
If the university's budget is reduced again in the coming fiscal year(s), as predicted, it is anticipated that further collections reductions will need to occur. - Why can't the Library take money from salaries or equipment or other expenses to relieve the deficit in collections?
The collections budget and the operations budget must stay in some semblance of balance, or there are not enough staff to select, order, catalog, process, shelve, and help users to access new resources. The Library's operations and personnel budgets have absorbed the majority of the FY 2008-09 cuts, as well as a portion of the 2009-2010 cuts. The Library operations budget has been cut by ~20% over the last five years. Additionally. the Library has been forced to make some difficult choices to balance the effect of these cuts including not replacing open librarian and staff positions and reducing the number of open hours of the library. Still, the collections budget must also be reduced, even with the other measures taken, to meet the Library's overall budget reduction (14.5% within the last two years).
- Can't we use endowment money to cover the deficit?
Our endowments have never provided an amount of money needed to fully cover the deficit.Additionally, endowments received in the past are generally restricted to specific uses and the Library spends them in accordance with the agreements.
- Do faculty research grants help to fund Library resources?
Granting agencies are often interested in what Library resources available are to and are used by researchers. We routinely provide information about existing holdings to faculty as they apply for grants. Some faculty have been successful in increasing their grant to purchase new Library materials though this has been rare.
- What can an individual faculty member do to help reduce the cost of journals?
There are many ways that scholars can help restructure scholarly publishing, as authors, members of editorial boards, participants in peer review, and members of professional societies. If you are serving as a member of a journal's editorial board, please consider promoting the University of California statement as well as two important statements by the library community in which we have asked publishers to keep renewal rates in line with the realities of the global economic crisis and reduce the rate of development of new products for the library marketplace. These statements are available for your inspection at:- Association of Research Libraries: ARL Statement to Scholarly Publishers on the Global Economic Crisis (PDF)
- International Coalition of Library Consortia: Statement on the Global Economic Crisis and its Impact on Consortial Licenses
- Can faculty donate personal copies of their subscription to the Library?
The Library appreciates the offer, but in most cases, publishers have different pricing structures for individuals and institutions and the cost to individuals is typically much less. Publishers do not expect the personal copy to be used in a Library, and doing so may create a conflict.
In those rare cases in which it may be allowed, experience has shown it to be impractical. The Library uses a service to handle subscriptions and business transactions with hundreds of publishers for thousands of journals. Individual arrangements can be quite time-consuming and result in gaps or delays in receiving issues. Processing individual gift copies is staff intensive and simply not scalable.
- Do we have information about the use of individual titles in print?
Talk to your library subject specialist. For copies that circulate, CruzCat may be able to provide usage information for print copies of periodicals.
- Do we have information about the use of individual titles online?
Vendors provide the Library with data for various categories of usage of the electronic versions of journals. We will be making the information about journal usage available for several of the larger electronic journal packages.
You may also contact your library subject specialist.
- When the electronic version of a journal is canceled, do we still retain electronic access to the years/volumes that we subscribed to before the cancellation?
The answer to this varies by publisher, but in most cases, we will. This question however, brings up two issues. One is the issue of perpetual access and the other is the issue of archival access. Both issues are items addressed in each consortial agreement negotiated by CDL on behalf of the UC Libraries and are also tenets of UC guidelines for license agreements we enter into for local subscriptions.
UC's guidelines require that contracts be negotiated to ensure that if we do not renew subscriptions to particular titles, the UCs will continue to have perpetual access to the issues for which we already have paid. (e.g., If we subscribe to content published in 2003 but decide to cancel a contract in 2005, we will continue to have access to the 2003 content and all other content we have already paid for.)
CDL also arranges for archival access to titles using a variety of strategies, including- Purchasing one archival print copy of each electronic title and housing it at the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF).
- Asking publishers to maintain an electronic archive of all subscribed content.
- Asking that if for some reason a publisher cannot maintain an electronic archive, that the publisher agree to transfer the electronic archive to a depository agreed to by an independent board of library advisors.
- How can I get access to titles once they have been canceled?
Postprint and preprint versions may exist online in an institutional or subject repository or on the author's web page. Additionally, the Library's Interlibrary Loan Service can be used to request articles, books, or other documents that the Library does not own or to which we do not offer access.
- Can I donate my start-up funds funds to help the library meet its budget shortfall?
As we find ways to reduce costs and seek new sources of funding, our guiding principles remain the same:
Donating faculty start-up funds -- one-time allocations intended to initiate or supplement library materials related to new faculty members' teaching or research interests -- will unfortunately not assist the Library in meeting its permanent budget reduction but could help us with one-time purchases.