Here is the 2018/19 library materials budget. This budget reflects strong support for Library collections from the University. The University has provided support to protect the budget from exposure to the US exchange rate. Approximately 85% of expenditures are in USD, and without this support cancellations and/or reductions to book lines of approximately $1.2M would be needed to balance the budget. In addition, the University responded positively to a request from the Library for a lift to the base budget to address rising resource costs; this is reflected in the budget as a lift of $181,000.
This budget has been set with the assumption of the US/Canadian exchange rate at 1.23. In order to provide predictability in this regard, USD has been forward purchased at this agreed upon rate for our forecasted need.
Please note the following additional points about this budget:
- With this fiscal year, the Surrey Library (Fraser) collections budget has been transferred from Surrey Administration within the VP External portfolio to the SFU Library budget within the VP Research portfolio. This allows collections to be managed in a more integrated way, and brings consistency to SFU Library collections as Vancouver (Belzberg) Library’s collection budget is also part of the larger SFU Library budget.
- Serial allocations have been set based on increases of 3.5% over the previous year’s expenditures, and with support for the USD/CAD exchange rate of 1.23, corrected for format changes, new subscriptions, cancellations, and other factors.
- Monograph allocations have generally remained the same as last fiscal year, but a lower US exchange rate means the purchasing power has increased by a few percentage points. Some funds may also have corrections to account for new serials, or cancelled/ceased serials.
An explanation of the fund codes used in the budget appears below. Note that 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 19% of all book titles purchased come in on Approval.
- Forms: purchases from notifications received based on subject profiles set up with our major book vendor. Secondary subjects are covered by forms in the profiles. Approximately 40% 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. Included in this category are ebook packages, the purchase of which is not supported by our current book vendor. This method accounts for 40% 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 paid for 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.