Cuts threaten library budget, says director

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

ibraries director Margo Crist forecasted a reduced acquisitions budget for the Libraries for this fiscal year at the Faculty Senate's Oct. 18 meeting.

     Crist updated the senate on the impact of an expected $3 million decrease in the Educational and Reference Materials (ERM) line of the state budget on the Libraries' acquisitions budget. The Amherst campus receives 30 percent of the ERM line, Crist said.

     "Unfortunately, that also means we receive 30 percent of the cuts," she said. This would amount to a reduction of more than 21 percent from the FY2001 budget, according to the senate's Research Library Council.

     She told the senate that the loss of nearly $1 million in acquisitions revenue would mean a substantial reduction in the Libraries' ability to purchase journals and books. The Libraries had already been battling increasing prices for serials and monographs that have outstripped the Consumer Price Index increases for well over a decade. The average cost of periodicals rose 207 percent between 1986 and 1999, a period in which the Consumer Price Index rose 46 percent.

     "The inflation shortfall...also needs to be addressed," she said.

     Crist said she chose to present the situation to the senate before the state's budget has been finalized because the Libraries must decide this month which journal subscriptions to cut for the coming year, whether or not the budget has been finalized. Payments for serials are due in November, and the opportunity to cancel won't come again until next fall.

     "We're going to be stuck with some of these decisions for a year," she said. "And we know that we need a much larger campus-wide conversation [about ways to save money].

     "We may not emerge from this as the same kind of library. But can we maintain a quality research library with significantly less in the acquisitions budget? We in the library would answer 'yes' to this question."

     When considering how to reduce acquisitions spending, Crist said Libraries staff is paying attention to undergraduate needs.

     "About half of UMass book usage is by undergraduates," she said. "140,000 books go out the doors each year with undergraduates."

     Libraries already have been creative in limiting duplication of journal subscriptions with the Worcester campus, subscribing only to more heavily used journals, and implementing a delivery service that makes articles available from Worcester, often within 24 hours.

     Such programs have provided access to articles in journals that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for the campus to subscribe to. Crist said she intends to continue to pursue these cost-saving measures.

     After the presentation, the senate voted to "call upon the governor and the house and senate leadership to restore the current level of ERM funding and thereby avoid devastating cuts to our libraries."