Here is the 2017/18 Library materials budget as supported by the Senate Library Committee at its May 30th 2017 meeting.
The University has once again given financial support to protect this budget from exposure to the US exchange rate. The Library is very grateful for this assistance. Over 80% of expenditures are invoiced in USD and without this support the impact of a 1.32 USD/CAD exchange rate would reduce our purchasing power by over 25%. In addition, the University responded positively to a request from the Library for a lift to the base budget to address the loss of purchasing power due to inflation; reflected in the budget is a lift of $249,000.
This budget has been set with the assumption of the US/Canadian exchange rate at 1.32. In order to provide predictability in this regard, an amount equal to our estimated USD spend has been forward purchased at the agreed upon rate of 1.32.
Please note the following additional points about this budget:
- Serial allocations have been set based on increases of 4% over the previous year’s expenditures, and with support for the USD/CAD exchange of 1.32, corrected for format changes, new subscriptions, cancellations, and other factors.
- Monograph allocations have remained the same as last fiscal year. Some funds may also have corrections to account for new serials, or, cancelled/ceased serials.
- In the 2016/17 budget many Serials & Databases lines were allocated more money than was expended. The formula used to predict increases and set the allocation was based on the same principles as previous years. This is the first year in which the formula resulted in over allocating these lines to this extent. The tools in our current acquisitions software do not allow us to easily analyze why this occurred. The same formula has been used this year and if warranted, the method of predicting increases will be reviewed for future budgets.
An explanation of the fund codes used in the budget appears below. Not all funds will have all the following codes:
Books includes:
- Approvals: purchases received in book form based on subject profiles set up with our major book vendor. Primary subjects are covered by these approvals profiles. Approximately 14% of all book titles purchased come in on Approval.
- Forms: purchases from information forms received based on subject profiles set up with our major book vendor. Secondary subjects are covered by forms in the profiles. Approximately 24% of all book titles are purchased as a result of this alerting program.
- Discretionary: purchases from information provided by faculty and students, or selected directly by the liaison librarian without input from our major book vendor. Depending on the subject area, mainly secondary subjects are covered by discretionary purchases. This method accounts for 62% of purchases on book funds.
Serials & Databases includes:
- Periodicals: cover the journals purchased by the Library, both print and electronic.
- Serials: cover other regularly purchased items that are bought from year to year. These consist of yearbooks, annuals, handbooks, monographic series on standing order, etc.
- Databases: cover electronic indexes, and other databases that are purchased each year (eg. leased ebook collections, encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.). Subject based databases are covered in the departmental budgets and more general databases are purchased out of general funds.