FY07 Budget: Serials Cancellations
With the rest of the University of Maryland, the Libraries� budget was cut every year from FY02 through FY05. Over these years, the Libraries� base acquisitions budget was cut a total of approximately 10%, over 1.2 million dollars. In FY06 the Libraries had a $250,000 increase to our base acquisitions budget and a further $300,000 increase in FY07. Nonetheless, during this same time period, journal prices inflated in the 7%-11% range per year and book prices increased an average 4% per year. The exchange rate during this time has tended to be unfavorable, as well, further impeding the Libraries� ability to build its collections.
However, the Libraries successfully avoided the deep cancellations experienced at other institutions during this period through careful shepherding of our funds, regular evaluation of and adjustments to our subscriptions, through the receipt of two consecutive one-time inflation subsidies from the Provost, and from other one-time funds and savings. Namely, we have
- moved journal subscriptions from selected publishers to an electronic-only format, in many cases realizing discounted prices for the initial year
- arranged payment plans with both book and journal suppliers to garner credits and discounted prices
- annually reviewed database subscriptions and
- reduced the number of simultaneous online users where price models and use patterns allowed
- changed database vendors when savings could be realized without sacrificing quality
- leveraged our consortial bargaining power to keep database subscriptions costs as low as possible
- cancelled subscriptions to low use and high-cost-per-use databases
- as more and more products enter the market, reduced redundancy in our database subscriptions
- in FY04, after careful review of serial subscriptions with campus faculty, cancelled subscriptions to the lowest priority, least used serials (amounting to 5% of serials expenditures)
- scrutinized our subscriptions to our most expensive publishers, utilizing use statistics and cost-per-use calculations to redirect funds to maintain higher-use subscriptions
During this same period, we not only managed to preserve 95% (in dollars) of our ongoing subscriptions, we added significant (particularly electronic) resources. These have included multiple collections of JSTOR journals, Early English Books Online, ArtSTOR, and the IEEE Electronic Library.
By this time the Libraries have largely exhausted other options for responding to the inadequate inflationary increases. Most of these strategies resulted in one-time savings; inflationary price increases have surpassed initial savings. Other than anticipating a 5% discount on approximately 275 journals from Taylor & Francis in moving to electronic-only for their titles, we have no other places in the budget to recoup enough money to maintain fully our projected $7.4 million in serial obligations. Relying on one-time measures of course cannot be sustained and have only delayed the inevitable; recurring costs must be aligned to permanent, ongoing funds.
For FY07, since we cannot deficit spend, we have no alternative other than to cancel 8%, in expenditures, of our journal subscriptions. Delays in campus announcements of our FY07 budget meant that we were unable to announce this cut in acquisitions in late spring prior to graduation.
The Libraries will act upon faculty input gathered in the regularly scheduled Serial Review process, which was just conducted in FY06, to cancel from among our lowest priority subscriptions from every department. A list of titles to be cancelled will have to be finalized in early September since subscriptions are renewed by October to ensure uninterrupted access and receipt of new issues. Cancellations will take effect beginning with issues published in 2007.Database subscriptions will also be evaluated but since renewal decisions for databases are made in the spring, we have already committed to the majority of our resources for FY07. Lower priority databases that have not already been renewed will be examined at the point of renewal. Any adjustments to our database subscriptions that renew in the spring will be considered for FY08.
As a precautionary measure, in case as the year unfolds and as journal prices are set for 2007 it appears that our inflation projections were too low, we will begin the fiscal year with a 75% cap on all discretionary monograph funds. By the end of the third quarter we should know whether or not this cap could be lifted.
Ultimately, after the substantial cuts to the Libraries� materials budget and regular inflation in serial prices, cancellation of serial titles can no longer be avoided.
