Report of the Collection Allocation Task Group to the SFU Senate Library Committee June 16, 2000

[link to Action Plan, September 2000]

Table of contents

1. INTRODUCTION
2. SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
3. ANALYSIS OF SFU LIBRARY'S COLLECTION ALLOCATIONS
4. GROUPING OF MONOGRAPH ACCOUNTS
5. FUNDING NEW PROGRAMMES AND FACULTY
6. GENERAL COMMENTS
7. CONCLUSION

Appendix A Terms of Reference
Appendix B Articles reviewed
Appendix C Anomalies identified
Appendix D Keys to tables of factors and indicators
Appendix E Tables of factors and indicators
Appendix F Comparison between fund and call number categories

Additional information

1. INTRODUCTION

The SFU Library's collection budget is healthy compared to that of its peer comprehensive universities. Yet it still is not enough to allow us to collect the range of materials required to fully support the teaching and research of the very diverse programmes at the University. The research and teaching information needs of the SFU community are equivalent to those of researchers and students at the most handsomely funded large institutions.  An emphasis on  providing efficient  access (through Interlibrary Loans) in part makes up for this discrepancy. Collaborative initiatives such as the Canadian National Site Licence Project will provide SFU access to additional resources.

While funding for materials for new courses is prescribed as part of the establishment of the course, there is no provision for support for new or realigned research interests. The urgency of addressing this problem will increase as there are more retirements and new faculty appointments over the next few years. The increasing availability of electronic materials and the constant introduction of new journals have expanded the choice available. Thus, it is particularly important that the budget we have is spent wisely and most effectively, and that we have the flexibility to respond to new opportunities.

A process to develop a collections policy is close to completion. This policy is being prepared with the participation of and in consultation with liaison librarians, departmental representatives, graduate students, and faculty.

SFU Library has not undertaken a major review of its collection budget allocation and methods of funding new programmes and research interests for many years. However, the collection has in effect been shaped in the recent past by several serials cancellation projects. In the first instance, expensive journals were targetted; in the second, large serials budgets were targetted. Other changes to the budget allocation have been piecemeal. As a result, the Library Review Report recommended that the library's collection budget allocations be  reviewed. Informal conversation with SFU faculty indicate that no department is entirely satisfied with their subject's share of the collection budget.

A Library Collection Budget Allocation Task Group (reporting to the Senate Library Committee) was struck to address these issues. The terms of reference are in Appendix A. This report is the result of the deliberations of that Task Group.

2. SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

RECOMMENDATION 1: The Library collection allocation process be made as open and equitable as possible.

RECOMMENDATION 2: It is recommended that Education and Communications collection budgets be increased.

RECOMMENDATION 3: It is recommended that data for groupings of departmental funds, (based on monograph purchases, budget size, and known affinities), be produced for several years. An assessment should then be made of the advantages/disadvantages of combining these on an ongoing basis.

RECOMMENDATION 4: It is recommended that:

RECOMMENDATION 5: Departments established subsequent to 1992/93 (Earth Sciences, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Humanities, Statistics) should be addressed on a priority basis by the Library in consultation with the department and other related units; the goal should be to provide adequate library resources within the constraints of the Library budget and other departmental requirements.

RECOMMENDATION 6

6.a. The collection budget should fund materials purchased for the collection in any format, or acquired for use of a single individual through Interlibrary Loan, or licensed for use.
6.b. Purchased or licensed materials will be assigned to collection funds regardless of format or purpose.
6.c. The Library should encourage ‘principled publishing’ by supporting publishers and organizations such as SPARC, High Wire Press, etc. where they support the Library’s collection policies.
6.d. Materials of wide general interest should be moved to the general library account.
6.e. There should continue to be flexibility in the budget allocation by allowing the transfer of funds from discretionary allocations to purchase serials, if the serials budget is less than 90% for that group.

3. ANALYSIS OF SFU LIBRARY'S COLLECTION ALLOCATIONS

A. FACTORS CONSIDERED

The Task Group examined a number of issues relating to Collection Allocation and to the possible ways of analyzing the factors which might play a role in determining what were reasonable departmental allocations.

All too frequently libraries rely heavily on historical allocations in determining subsequent allocations. Changes in allocation may reward the 'squeaky wheel' without reflecting the overall priorities of the institution. Although expenditures within departmental allocations of SFU Library's collection budget rely heavily on faculty input, the view has been expressed that changes in the allocation are not done openly, and that departmental allocations are inequitable. Therefore it is recommended that:

RECOMMENDATION 1:

The Library collection allocation process be made as open and equitable as possible by:

• the Library continuing the practise of reviewing the departmental allocations each year with departmental reps. as well as the Senate Library Committee;
• the Library reporting annually to the Senate Library Committee on reallocations or special expenditures or purchases, such as those from the endowment funds;
• the Senate Library Committee reviewing overall collection fund allocation processes and amounts periodically. An appropriate time would be in the period leading up to each Library Review. The next time a review is done, the historical information will have accumulated over a longer period of time than the current review.

A number of articles from the literature were reviewed (Appendix B). The Library literature and informal conversation with other  university libraries indicate that reviews relying on various allocation formulas have had mixed  success, but can provide at least an indicator of significant anomalies. Such a process inevitably  reflects the values of the institution, in both the variables selected and the weighting given to each. After some discussion, and with the help of Walter Wattamaniuk, Analytical Studies, it was decided that the most effective method would be to look at indicators which compared a number of factors measuring departmental activity to a number of factors measuring the size of the allocation to that department and identify those departments whose indicators seemed to be consistently anomalous. The alternative of applying a rigorous formula was felt to be too rigid, and it was recognized that ultimately, the results would have been inappropriately value-laden because subjective weights would need to be assigned to each variable.

The Task Group thought about whether to consider intangible factors such as whether a subject area might be considered library-intensive or very multidisciplinary. To some extent, these played a role in the discussion. Nevertheless, it was felt that the widespread perception among faculty that the collection budget for their discipline was too low indicated that the Library’s collections play a significant role in every discipline; therefore it did not seem appropriate to weight the relative value of library materials to particular disciplines.

The following factors were considered in the process. A wide variety of factors could have been considered, but those chosen below were felt to be sufficiently representative. There were limitations in available data which are noted below.

Basically we wanted to get a sense of how equitably the collection budget is allocated by comparing library collection factors with university/departmental factors, both currently and over time.

The time element would give us a sense of whether collection allocations had shifted up or down compared to university/departmental factors. The most recent available as well as ‘historical’ data from 1992/93, (the earliest collection information available), were considered, by department.

Some departments had been created during that period or had merged but had separate collection allocations. These changes were accommodated by combining various data. It is recommended below that these new department allocations be addressed quickly. Some departments and collection groupings have been omitted from the analysis because data were insufficient or not comparable.

Obtained from Analytical studies:

• Student fte (1999/00; 1992/93)
• Graduate fte (1998/99; 1992/93)
• Faculty fte (1999/00; 1992/93)
• Research dollars (average 1997/98, 98/99; 1992/93)

Obtained from Library:

Because of the wide variation in prices, particularly for journals, collection dollar allocations would not indicate the quantity of material purchased for any one department. Thus it was decided to examine the number of items purchased as well.

• Monograph circulation (1999)
• Internal journal reshelving (two weeks in Spring/summer semester, 2000; not yet available)
• Collection budget (1998/99; 1992/93) monographs, serials and totals
• Number of items acquired (serials and monographs, 1998/99; serials 1992/93)
• • Monograph counts were not available 1992/93.
  • Number of payments were counted to estimate the number of monographs purchased.
  • Serial titles were counted from the serials cost lists.
  • Titles obtained through memberships or other group purchases were added to the count, where possible.
  • A ‘units purchased’ factor was created: 6*number of serial titles + number monographs. A serial subscription involves more than a single physical piece unlike monographs. The average number of checkins per year per subscription is approximately six.
• Call number category to which monographic material was assigned

Other:

• Industry-wide serial price increases

During the data gathering process, a number of anomalies were identified. These are noted in Appendix C. Suffice it to say that the committee agreed that the information gathered could be used to indicate where significant funding inequities existed, but that to try to use it as a precise determinant of departmental allocations would only serve to introduce different inequities.

B. INDICATORS CONSIDERED

Appendix E contains the tables and charts which formed the basis for the budget allocation analysis. Appendix D contains the keys to the tables.

The following indicators were considered. There were many others which could have also been, but the Task Group felt that these figures were representative. Archaeology/faculty CFL figures are given as an example to aid in the interpretation of the tables in Appendix E.

Historic

    example:

        Archaeology ratio of collection increase to faculty increase 1998-99 over 1992-93
        = ($total9899/$total9293)/(#faculty9899/#faculty9293)=(38225/15602)/(11/10)=2.45

• Ratio of unit serial prices 1998-99 over 1992-93: this factor was examined to give an indication of how SFU's expenditures followed industry trends for serials pricing, namely that science and applied science titles have increased disproportionately to the prices in other disciplines and to the CPI.

   example:
        Archaeology ratio of unit serial prices 98-99 over 92-93
        = ($serials 9899/#serials9899)/($serials9293/#serials9293)=(21103/74)/(5305/71)=3.82

Current

• Ratios of collection factors to faculty, graduate and undergraduate FTEs. Collection factors were Total expenditures and Units acquired (units=6*no.serials+no.monographs). Total expenditure ratios tend to disfavour departments with large serials costs. Units acquired figures tend to disfavour those with large numbers of inexpensive journals.

    example:
        Archaelogy ratio of units acquired 1998-99 per faculty
        =(6*no.serials+no.monographs)/no. faculty= (6*74+203)/11=58.82

• Circulation by category for 1999. These figures were not ultimately used as indicators because monographs purchased from one departmental fund were often catalogued in another category (see section 6)

C. ANALYSIS OF INDICATORS

for each indicator, the departments whose values lay in the highest or lowest quartile were identified (see  table). The departments which were often low or often high were identified. Two departments (Education and Communications) were consistently low. None were consistently high.

RECOMMENDATION 2:

It is recommended that Education and Communications collection budgets be increased.

In addition, departments with five out of twelve high or low indicators were examined. None of these was felt to warrant adjustment, for reasons outlined below.

The following departments appeared as outliers at least five times out of twelve (ten for French):

5. FUNDING NEW PROGRAMMES AND FACULTY

The large number of  faculty retirements and new faculty  will require that the library’s collection be reshaped on a continuing basis over the next decade. New and expanding programmes frequently require different library materials than are currently collected. Formal provision for funding new library resources in place only for when new courses are created. Yet new faculty and new programmes reflect changing research interests which must be accommodated along with those of existing faculty. Minimal collection requirements identified when a new programme is established often do not match the greater expectations of those ultimately involved in the programme. That this is an important issue is demonstrated by the acquisition of specific serials titles having been a negotiating issue in recent faculty hiring. Sometimes these changes cannot be accommodated within an existing departmental budget.

RECOMMENDATION 4

It is recommended that:

4.a. Part of the process for the establishment of a new department should include an examination of the collection resources required, and the source of funding for those resources.

The Task Group feels that the course assessment process should continue; there are a variety of methods of funding the cost of materials other than departmental transfers (cancellation of other materials, changes to the allocation profile, reduction of discretionary funds, new programme funding), and these should be explored when a new course is established.

RECOMMENDATION 5
 

Departments established subsequent to 1992/93 (Earth Sciences, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Humanities, Statistics) have concerns that their resource requirements have not been specifically addressed in this report. These should be addressed on a priority basis by the Library in consultation with the department and other related units; the goal should be to provide adequate library resources within the constraints of the Library budget and other departmental requirements. This may require a phased approach over more than one year.

6. GENERAL COMMENTS

RECOMMENDATION 6

6.a. The collection budget should fund materials purchased for the collection in any format, or acquired for use of a single individual through Interlibrary Loan, or licensed for use.
6.b. Purchased or licensed materials will be assigned to collection funds regardless of format or purpose (serial, monograph, reference, Web database etc.).
6.c. The significant increases in scholarly journal prices, well beyond increases in production and distribution costs, have been well documented. The Library should encourage ‘principled publishing’ by supporting publishers and organizations such as SPARC, High Wire Press, etc. where they support the Library’s collection policies.
6.d. It has been observed that a number of anomalies in assignment of individual titles to departmental codes exist; for example, parliamentary papers are included in the ‘poli’ account. Materials of wide general interest should be moved to the general library account.
6.e. There should continue to be flexibility in the budget allocation by allowing the transfer of funds from discretionary allocations to purchase serials, if the serials budget is less than 90% for that group.

7. CONCLUSION

In order for any library collection development process to be successful, it must be open and equitable. Faculty and librarians must be able to co-operate in an atmosphere of trust toward mutual goals. It is the Task Group's belief that the recommendations in this report establish the basis for the SFU community work with the Library to build a collection which will best serve SFU's needs in the future.