As part of its share of the U’s budget cut, the U Marriott Library will have to trim $300,000 by July 1 in order to meet budget requirements.
With the budget decrease, the Marriott Library will have to let go of eight unfilled full-time job positions, along with decreasing its collection of periodical subscriptions.
“We have already sent notices to all faculty members on campus in hopes that they will help us decide which journals should stay and which we should eliminate,” said Sarah Michalak, director of the Marriott Library.
Michalak said the library wanted to let users know there is a careful process that goes into deciding which journals should be canceled, not just by looking at the number of times a journal has been checked out.
“Some of them have already given us a lot of feedback, which will be carefully considered,” she said.
The library subscribes to approximately 14,500 journals in print form. Although the journals can be used by anyone from professors to undergraduates, the faculty members are usually the ones to request most of the subscriptions, Michalak said.
“Most people go to journals for their research, because it is the most up-to-date information out there,” she said.
But despite the budget cut, the library will still receive some additional funding.
“The Marriott Library will receive $150,000 back from the tuition-increase funds to help increase their electronic journal collection,” said David Pershing, senior vice president for academic affairs.
The $150,000 that will be given back to the library will be used for electronic journal subscriptions such as EBSCO, a vendor of thousands of journals covering various topics.
Margaret Landesman, head of collection development, said the most frequent users of journals prefer to use electronic versions instead of print.
“Electronic journals offer users instant access from anywhere on campus. It can be convenient, but unfortunately not always at a lower price,” she said.
Landesman said the library cannot keep up with the growing prices for journal subscription, which averages a 10 percent increase each year.
“Just as you compare the growth rate of salary to rising tuition costs, we cannot afford to keep the journals that we have much longer with the current cuts,” Landesman said.
This budget cut will be the third severe budget cut the library has experienced since 1997.
“If there are continued budget cuts later this year, we will have no choice but to cut our budget further by moving on to books,” Michalak said.
“The state budget covers approximately 90 percent of our annual funding, so it is getting to the point where it has become quite serious.”