Those of you who read the LLT minutes will be aware that the Library Committee approved changes to the Tay Formula at their last meeting. For 2010 around $2m worth of multidisciplinary packages will be moved from departmental allocations into a new general library fund. This will be partially offset by some items being charged to the departments rather than being centrally funded. Overall the Library will attempt to maintain a 80:20 serials:books ratio. (Currently it is at about 84:16). This level of commitment to serials leaves us very vulnerable to budget blow-outs. With the move to centralised packages, the funding level for serials for individual departments will remain capped at the level of expenditure necessary to maintain their existing serials with allowance for annual publisher increases. Departments will not be able to move book funds to journals. The only way to get a new journal will be to cancel another journal. This decision has yet to be conveyed to the Library Liasion Officers but advice will go out to them next week.
Readers of the LLT minutes will also be aware that the Library recently had a request from Financial Services to accept a Library collections budget for 2010 of $1,228,000. less than what was requested. The Library has agreed to relinquish $300,000 of its 2010 collections budget request . If it had had to find the whole $1.2M, serials would have inevitably have had to be cut quite drastically. There are no guarantees that we might not have to find savings of this magnitude in the future. The over-riding message is that we need to try and reduce, rather than increase, our serials expenditure. We are currently running behind budget in some of our 2009 funds but are only in a position to make one-off purchases such as backfiles. The Datasets Group will be meeting on Monday to look at the most judicious way of spending our remaing budget. Clearly we can not commit to any additional ongoing commitments in the current environment. Cynthia.