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Dear Colleagues in the University Community:
I write to update you on the University Libraries’ response to Colgate’s economic situation in the context of the 2009/2010 budget and beyond. Next week your Liaison Librarian will send your chairperson, for your review and feedback, information prepared by the Libraries on subscriptions in the subject area paralleling your department or program. These are journal titles either that have received fewer than five uses per year for the past two to three years and have a cost per use greater than $15 or with a cost greater than $100 per use. We ask for your help in ranking these titles in order of importance to the curriculum and to student/faculty research before we plan to initiate subscription cancellations. For this review, subscriptions include journals, magazines, newspapers, databases, monographic series, abstracting and indexing services, reference resources, and other services for which we are billed on an annual basis. We must notify our subscriptions vendors of our intent to cancel by this June with the effective date for the cancellations being January 2010.
The object of the review is to find $135,000 in library cancellations of subscriptions for the 2009/2010 budget year and to prepare for likely additional cancellations in the following budget year. Two factors influence the need for the present major cancellation review: potential budget cuts and anticipated inflationary costs for serials. For the next fiscal year, the budget for operations and materials has been reduced by 5%. Moreover, inflation for library materials has averaged 8%, well above the rate of consumer inflation. The two factors amount to a projected shortfall of 13%. Regrettably, the Libraries must prepare to reduce their level of acquisitions and subscriptions by this amount for next year based on usage and cost data. We also plan to purchase fewer books, CDs, and films.
Your chairperson will receive more detailed instructions about working with you on ranking the value of the journals from your Librarian Liaison. Your input about identifying the titles that are least important for your teaching, student learning, and student/faculty research will help us make better decisions in this cancellation project. Titles that you believe should not be cancelled should be accompanied by feedback that explains the importance of the title for your work. We also invite your suggestions of alternate titles that may be considered for cancellation. We ask that department chairs return the ranked lists to their Liaison Librarians by April 30. We will review the lists in the context of your rankings and comments and develop a final list for cancellation that will be shared with the faculty as a whole prior to our sending it to our subscriptions vendor.
If you have questions about the review please contact your Liaison Librarian. Emily Hutton-Hughes, Head of Collection Development, and I would be willing to meet with department representatives at the request of the chair. Project information has been vetted by the Library Advisory Committee composed of Deborah Knuth Klenck, Jyoti Khanna, Vijay Ramachandran, Ann-Marie Guglieri, Judith Oliver, David Gregory, and me.
I am well aware that the Libraries partnered with you three years ago to cancel $204,000 in subscriptions. This project proceeded in a seamless manner and we appreciate the role that faculty played in it. Together the librarians and the faculty identified low-use or high cost-per-use journals to cut. I acknowledge that the current project will be more challenging.
You may recall that the 2006 cancellation provided the impetus for the Library Advisory Committee to obtain a vote from the faculty for the University Budget Committee to fund the annual rate of inflation for library materials through fiscal year 2012. The budget committee’s subsequent agreement to this motion was predicated on a stable economy. The current downturn, however, has voided this arrangement.
Additionally, the Libraries have taken steps to further reduce overall spending. Operations allocations for supplies, travel, and equipment have been cut. Regarding the collections, we will continue to maximize the use of consortial discounts for information resources negotiated in collaboration with CU partner libraries, eliminate duplicate formats wherever possible (e.g. canceling print and microform editions of journals that are available electronically), and cancel electronic databases with substantial content overlap or where alternative access to information is available in another product. Next fall, we are preparing to initiate a new, expedited interlibrary lending service through ConnectNY and the Oberlin Group Consortium which would potentially cover a significant percentage of journal article requests. Called RapidILL, it has as its goal a 24-hour turnaround time from the time the request has been placed to it being received by the requestor.
This is a difficult time for all of us at the university as we adjust to changing economic expectations. I can assure you that the Libraries will continue to do everything they can to provide faculty, students and staff with the best information resources and services possible. Thank you in advance for helping us to make decisions necessary to support that goal.
Sincerely,
Joanne A. Schneider
University Librarian and Professor
Colgate University Libraries