In May, I alerted you to the impact of the budget reductions faced by the Library. Over the past 2 years, the University Library's budget has been reduced by approximately 17 percent. While the cut in FY 09 impacted library operations and staffing, this year's cut of $1.55 million means the Library's Collection Budget can no longer be exempted. Spending on library resources must be reduced by approximately $780,000 in order to cope with the budget cut, and we must make additional smaller reductions to address an inflation rate of 7 percent for journals and to cover journal price increases.
The Library is utilizing several approaches to manage and balance the collections reductions. These strategies have been shaped by analysis of usage and expenditure patterns for locally purchased and subscribed content and content provided through the California Digital Library (CDL). The FY 10 cut will affect all resource types (databases, journals, books, etc.).
Over the summer, librarian subject specialists began the first phase of work required for these reductions by conducting a comprehensive review of the serials to which we subscribe locally. Data such as overall cost, cost per use (where available), inflation rates, publishing metrics (Impact Factor, Eigen Factor, etc.), subject areas, coverage provided by other journals to which we already subscribe, and UCSC faculty publishing patterns were gathered to help the Library evaluate the resources we acquire and/or license. The first step of this serials review process was to identify a set of titles that might meet the reduced collections budget. This phase of the evaluation process is now complete and a set of journal titles proposed for cancellation has been compiled.
The proposed title cancellation review lists are now available for faculty review until November 30. A special Budget Reduction Process & Journal Cancellation Project web site has been created and contains the title lists, more complete background information, and a FAQ, as well as a link to a comprehensive list of electronic journals licensed by UCSC. Please see http://library.ucsc.edu/collections/budget-reduction-process. Your feedback is important and instructive as we make difficult decisions. Comments describing how loss of a specific resource will impact student and research success at the programmatic level will be most useful.
You can be assured that articles from any canceled journals will be available to you through interlibrary loan, most often delivered directly to your desktop. Fortunately, technologies and extensive collaborative collection building with other UC libraries now provide us excellent options for rapidly delivering information to you when journals are not locally owned.
We appreciate your important input for this endeavor. Please do not hesitate to contact me (vsteel@ucsc.edu) or Kerry Scott, Head of the Collection Development Department (scottk@ucsc.edu) or your library subject specialist (http://library.ucsc.edu/collections/subject-specialists) with questions and concerns. All of us who work in the library are aware of the serious impacts these cancellations will have on faculty and others in the campus community, and we regret the need to make these reductions. We will continue to do everything we can within the constraints of our budget to provide faculty, students, and staff with the resources and services needed for instruction and research. Thank you for your support.
