Budget Allocation Formula

 

 

There are innumerable ways to allocate money in an academic library system. Some are simple (such as the PBA formula) and some are complicated in both their origin and application (such as the McGrath formula). The purpose of an allocation formula is to ensure that money is distributed in a way that is fair to each department, yet it must account for certain inevitable inequalities between departments. For example, English and Chemistry students enroll in courses that are more 'library intensive' Ð that is, they require more material from the library Ð than are courses in Health and Physical education. Chemistry serials are many times more expensive than English serials. (In 2000, an average Chemistry serial subscription was $3,496, compared to $119 for Literature, Languages, and Linguistics. ) Schools can rely on pre-established formulas such as the ones named above, or they can create their own 'from scratch'.

One type of material that regularly causes grief in the tech services department is the serial. Not only are they difficult to catalogue, but they are priced in a seemingly arbitrary way depending on the subject matter. As noted above, Chemistry and other hard-science serials can often have subscription prices that run 20-30 times that of other subjects. Add to this fact the rapidly rising inflation rates that, while not as steep as they have been in the past, make it difficult for collection development librarians to stay within budget year after year.

Academic libraries may choose among different formats for a particular serial and have to decide which option suits them best -- online, combination of print and digital etc. Increasingly, a great amount of the allocated funds is geared to access and lease of materials residing on remote servers. Western Libraries, for example, set a target of 75% of acquisitions budgets for digital resources in 2005. Libraries fold into various local, national or international consortia to collaboratively negotiate licence terms with vendors of electronic resources. Joint ventures with Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), for example, provided Western Libraries with savings averaging 25%. Contracts are negotiated for no more than three years as the environment changes rapidly; terms of access (ex. number of simultaneous users) are becoming standardized and are less of an issue than they were a year or two ago.