Iowa State University


Inside Iowa State
August 25, 2000

Budget woes hit library

(This is the first of two stories about the financial crisis facing the library.)

by Linda Charles
Two steps forward, one step back.

Last year, for the first time in years, the future looked rosy for the Iowa State Library. Additional funds were added to the budget to help address the ever-rising cost and proliferation of academic journals, and more funds were promised for the future. A solid plan was in place to move the library toward electronic offerings.

Then this year's budget crunch hit. University officials had to decide how to make up an $8 million shortfall in state appropriations. As part of the budget-cutting measures, administrators reduced budgets across the university, reluctantly including the library in the mix.

Plans for growth came to a halt as library staff made difficult decisions about what they could and couldn't accomplish this year.


Senate seeks solutions
The financial problems for the Iowa State library, like libraries across the nation, began in the 1960s when commercial publishers began taking over academic journals. Costs doubled, then doubled again. At the same time, the number of academic journals grew (see story).

A fourth journal cancellation project (in a 20-year period) at Iowa State caught the attention of the Faculty Senate, which appointed a committee to make recommendations to avoid future journal cuts. Those recommendations included substantial budget increases for the library in order to build an electronic library system that would allow access to online journals.

Former President Martin Jischke agreed to add $600,000 ($200,000 a year for three years) to the library's base budget to bring the library's electronic resources to a competitive level.

Last year, the library received the first $200,000 installment. The funds allowed the library to provide new electronic titles that otherwise would have been virtually impossible to purchase -- titles like Lexis-Nexis, Biological Abstracts/RRM, Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings, expanded access to SciFinder Scholar, Aerospace Database, PsycINFO, Historical Abstracts, Congressional Universe and Black Studies on Disc.

Another $175,000 was provided for the electronic library infrastructure, and funded an upgrade of the library's server. Officials also were able to reallocate 5 percent of the library budget to cover inflationary increases in its materials budget

"We completed the last stages of the server upgrade," said Olivia Madison, dean of library services. "Now we have a robust system supporting the e-library. The system is up and access to electronic journals is as quick as possible. When response time is slow, it's usually beyond our control. Rather, it is traffic jams on the Internet. Our system architecture is top rate.

"The president and provost came through on the core Faculty Senate recommendations last year," she added. "They did their best to increase our budget during this difficult budget year."


Second installment stalled
However, due to the current budget problems, the second installment of $200,000 to the library's base acquisition budget didn't materialize. In addition, the library had to give back a little over 1.5 percent of its non-acquisition budget -- funds that in part were intended for crucial information technology purchases.

Through internal reallocation, the library was able to set aside $150,000 toward its electronic library, far short of the amount it had planned on spending.

"It's unfortunate we had to revert some of the information technology funds back," Madison said. "We need to continue to upgrade the public PCs in the main library and branches and the servers supporting the e-library. The loss of those funds will be felt over time."

And while the acquisition budget (which is used to purchase journals) was protected by the administration during the recent budget cuts, the library received only a 4 percent inflationary increase. That's not enough to keep up with the 10 to 12 percent inflation costs of the journals.

Faculty Senate president David Hopper said, "As a result of recent budget cuts, the university library is in a state of deepening crisis.

"Unfortunately, the budget crisis has reduced the quality of our library. In 1998, the ISU Library was ranked 72nd among the top 108 university research libraries in the nation by the Association for Research Libraries. This year, our library ranked 84th."

(Next: How faculty can help.)

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