Collection Budget cuts  |  Library Budget Misconceptions  |  Impact of Cuts    Cancellation Guiding Principles  |  CDL Journal Review Project

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Collection Budget cuts

The 2011/2012 Permanent Collections Budget is $2,830,193 - the lowest it is has been since fiscal year 2000/2001:

Overall, the library's collection budget has been reduced by 35% since FY 2009/2010 AND the library's total budget has been reduced by 31% in the same time period.

How Did We Get Here?

Fiscal Year 2009/2010 - $830,000 permanent reduction of its base $4,389,460 budget

• In FY 2009/2010 $830,000  was permanently cut from the library's collection budget. This reduction represented 19% of our permanent base collection budget. As a result of the cut, librarians reviewed our local serial subscriptions and cancelled enough high cost per use titles, duplicative but discrete subscriptions (print and online), and low use titles to cancel to meet the permanent collections cut.

• Simultaneous to our local serial review, the California Digital Library (CDL) worked with the campuses and our journal and database vendors to broker as many cost neutral or low cost increases to our large serial package and database agreements as possible. These negotiations also resulted in loss of access to some content in the packages but did, in many cases, provide stable local pricing. As a result, our costs for content we license through the CDL went up, but not as steeply as anticipated. And, several systemwide databases were eliminated throughout the UC.
   

Fiscal Year 2011/2012 - $729,267 permanent reduction of its base $3,559,460 budget

• In FY 2011/2012 the Library's collection budget permanently lost an additional $729,267. This cut represents 20% of our permanent collection budget.

• The University Library's permanent collection budget is now $2.8 million. The last time the collection budget was under $3million was in fiscal year 2000/2001.

Average Journal Cost Comparison:

Library Collections Budget Misconceptions
 

A prevailing misconception regarding the California Digital Library is that the resources we license through CDL are free to the campus. In fact, they are not. The CDL negotiates and licenses some of our largest database and journal subscriptions. While the CDL does sometimes contribute funding, every campus pays a cost share in the purchase. Costs for materials licensed and purchased through the CDL are not budget neutral. In fact, like all other costs related to the collections budget, they rise annually. The annual inflation rate is anywhere from 3% to 7% per licensed resource.

This means that, without the addition of new permanent funds, we need to make cuts somewhere in our collection budget every fiscal year - even in years when the collections budget is not reduced. In effect, every year is a budget cut year for the collections budget unless new funds are received that cover the inflationary increases. In years when we do not receive additional funding cuts, we are able to manage this loss of spending power through a combination of natural attrition of subscriptions (some number of publications cease annually), uneven publication output and therefore subscription payments, fluctuations in the value of the dollar (if they are in our favor), and through the use of one time funds to temporarily carry us through. When we receive large reductions on top of the annual increases to our expenses, our options are severely limited. This is the situation we are in now.
 

The library received two large cuts to its permanent collection budget over the past three years. The University Library's Operating Budget absorbed a permanent cut of 27% to its base budget. Overall, the University Library's total budget (operations & collections) has been reduced by 31%

The University Library, like many libraries, allows Google Scholar to include our database and electronic holdings in their search results. As long as you are an affiliated faculty, staff, or student of UCSC, any UCSC owned or licensed content is available to you through Google Scholar. Once you step off campus (unless you log into the Off Campus Access Server), or if you leave the University, the content UCSC licenses will become available to you only for a fee. And, when we cancel subscriptions, access to those cancelled titles through Google Scholar becomes for-fee, too.
 

The UCSC Library has one of the highest circulation counts in the UC system. In addition to our campus members' prodigious use of online resources, we have a very active print user community.

Impact of Reductions to the Collections Budget

Impacts of the 35% permanent cut over three years:

• The library no longer intentionally duplicates format (for example, if we have it in print, we do not buy it electronically)
• The library no longer intentionally duplicates title purchases for any format of materials (books, DVDs, etc.)
• The library no longer automatically replaces lost, damaged, or stolen materials.
• The library no longer binds all loose print journal issues
• The library has not increased its departmental purchasing allocations since 2006 and in fact, has, in response to the 2011/2012 cut, cut its departmental allocations by a minimum of 30% - this means we have far fewer dollars to spend on faculty and student direct requests and have fewer dollars to spend to purchase titles that are not included in our approval plans (book ordering plans).
• The library has no permanent funds to purchase new and on-going serial commitments (local serial subscriptions or database subscriptions). We have strictly limited our expenditures to one time purchases for materials and/or short-term subscriptions paid through endowment funds or faculty start-up funds.
• The library's foreign language serial holdings will be reduced over the next three years.  The foreign language approvals (automatic purchasing plans) will be reviewed for cancellation decisions and our foreign language holdings will be reduced over the next three years. The remaining foreign language subscriptions will be placed back on the permanent budget in 2015.

Cancellation Guiding Principles

• To the extent possible, we will maintain high use local subscriptions.
• We will cancel low use, print only subscriptions.
• We will cancel low use local subscriptions for materials for which we also have online subscriptions for back issues. (for example, for titles that are in JSTOR, PAO, Ingenta).
• We will review for cancelation all titles that have substantial (20% and up) annual subscription cost increases.
• CDL costs represent more than half of our permanent collection budget line. However, to the extent possible, we are staying in CDL-brokered packages for journals and databases because, while their costs go up each year, they are still the most cost-effective and content-deep option for our campus. Without our financial commitments to many CDL-licensed materials, our campus population would have far fewer resources available to it.
• To the extent possible, for faculty only because of budget restrictions, we will make available alternative access and delivery methods for articles from the titles we cancel.
• We will identify areas in our monograph approval plans that can be trimmed back through adjustments to our profile .
• We will explore the cost effectiveness and impacts of demand-driven purchasing options.
• We will drop out of systemwide subscriptions that we can no longer afford due to high annual subscription increases or low value metrics.
• We will follow these principles and will consult if we have to deviate from them.

CDL journal review project

As in 2009/2010, the CDL is working with the campuses to help control our subscription costs, particularly in light of the systemwide budget challenges. As part of this process CDL is working with subject librarians across UC  to refine systemwide metrics to help ensure that our limited resources are allocated most effectively and with the greatest benefit to our user communities.

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