[ Projected ]
As the central intellectual and cultural resource of the campus community, the purpose of the Cal Poly Pomona University Library is to provide all students, faculty, staff, and administrators with effective and equitable access to the recorded information (i.e., collections of Library Materials) in a multiplicity of formats [including electronic] and duly representative of the world’s cultures and points of view necessary to support the University’s instruction, research, and public services mission.
- In order to “protect” the Library Materials allocation as much as possible and to limit the budget reduction in this mission-critical category of expenditure to “only” 4%, the Library will be taking major “hits” in the sublisted areas: Academic personnel payroll reduced by 14%; Support staff payroll down by 6%; Travel and Binding of Library Materials eliminated, i.e., down by 100%.
- The 4% decrease in spendable dollars for 2004-2005 comes on top of a projected average 10% increase in prices for Library Materials next year. Therefore, the impact of the single-digit 4% reduction translates into an actual double-digit 14% decrease in purchasing power. Most of the adverse impact will involve the Library’s inability to acquire current circulating books across the disciplines, and most especially in high-cost scientific/technical subjects.
- The ongoing shift from print to online resources, particularly in the area of journal literature, risks the instant loss of all content if funding levels are not maintained. Unlike print, electronic journals are site licensed rather than owned by the Library. If we were forced to cancel an electronic journal or a group of electronic journals, we would forfeit access to both current and retrospective journal content. We cannot afford to subscribe to both the print and the online version of journals. In general students prefer electronic access to journals. Therefore it is particularly important for the Library to be able to continue paying for access to important electronic journals. In order to ensure this, a steady/stable infusion of funds is required.
- Inability to acquire needed materials we should have available in our collections onsite will trigger an increase in Document Delivery and InterLibrary Loan requests, which will increase work load for Library staff and delay user access to current Library Materials in heavy demand.
- Inability to maintain acquisition rates for current materials will damage the Library’s ability to provide the range of materials sufficiently representative of diverse cultures and points of view in the short-term; it will also result in skewed “aging” of our collections and create long-term lacunae from which we will never be able to recover because in the contemporary economic environment of the publishing industry most printed materials become unavailable shortly after publication.
The bottom-line: In 2004-2005 the Library expects to be able to spend approximately $68 per FTES for Library Materials. Given the projected average price per volume in 2004-2005 ($62.30), and given that most of the Library’s materials budget must be devoted to journals and databases, this figure equates roughly to acquiring one-third of a “book” for every student (or one “book” for every three students).
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