$12 Million Library Proposal

The month of August provided two good omens for strengthening library collections and services for the 21st century. The first was the announcement on August 13 that Endeavor Library Systems had been chosen as the next generation library system for all the University of Wisconsin libraries. The second came a week later when the Regents approved the 1999/01 UW budget which includes $12 million dollars for library collections and resource sharing.

UW President Katharine Lyall made the following remarks to the Regents in her budget proposal:

First, we need to enhance the UW System’s libraries. They represent a priceless asset for the entire state, including K-12 schools, businesses, government agencies, and the general public. We are seeking $12 million in GPR and fees to increase the number of electronic journals and information sources available to library users, to expand existing document delivery services (making better use of our collections), and to restore a reasonable acquisitions budget.  The UW System has not received funding designated for library acquisitions in 10 years. (1999-2001 Biennial Budget Speech, August 20, 1998)

The library budget initiative is indeed good news for faculty and students. It is no secret that the library book and journal collections have been hit hard by inflation. Over the past 10 years libraries have lost 10-18% of their buying power per year as book and journal prices increased steadily. In order to stay within budget allocations libraries have reduced book purchases, canceled journal subscriptions and relied more heavily on interlibrary loan. Every academic unit on campus has felt the impact of these cuts.

In addition to losing ground with traditional scholarly sources libraries have had difficulty keeping up with the acquisition of electronic databases and journals. We have been fortunate the last few years to have had some help from UW System Library Automation funds for electronic resources. As the debt was retired on the KeyNotis library system, dollars became available to purchase system-wide licenses for EbscoHost, Encyclopedia Britannica and several others. This was seen as a temporary solution to the reduced book and journal acquisitions because the Library Automation funds would be needed to replace the KeyNotis system before the end of the century. Without new funding in the next biennium the University will be facing continued erosion of print resources along with the loss of the electronic subscriptions which have become a very important aspect of faculty and student research.

The Regents’ $12 million dollar library initiative will go a long way toward improving access to academic information.

The new funding will be used to:

1) maintain strong campus collections for frequently used material

2) improve research collections for sharing across the system

3) support a speedy delivery system for resource sharing.

The Regent funding initiative is key to our academic mission because it will enable libraries to acquire the intellectual content that supports student learning. However, the $12 million dollars is not secure. The UW Library Directors have worked with Senior Vice President David Ward and the Regent Education Committee to develop support for this library funding initiative, but our work is not done and we need help.

Over the next few months the Regent budget proposal must work its way through the Governor’s Office and the Legislature. There are many competing interests for State funding and many people see library funding as unnecessary because they think information is entirely free. As an academic you know that scholarly information is not free, in fact it is very expensive. It is imperative to convince the decision-makers that new funding for UW libraries is critical for teaching and research. If you have ideas for "making the case" we would like to hear from you. Additional library funding is absolutely essential for supporting student learning and faculty research in the 21st century

Kathy Pletcher (UW-Green Bay) for the Council of University of Wisconsin Libraries (CUWL).