SFU Library Materials Budget 2023/2024

Here is the 2023/2024 library materials budget.

As in recent years, in addition to the base budget, the library requested the support of the University to protect the collection budget from exposure to the USD exchange rate since approximately 90% of collections expenditures are in USD. While the base budget remains the same as in 2022/23, the library received $1.368M out of the $2.065M; this represents two thirds of the additional request.

Unfortunately, this reduction will have a significant impact in the library acquisition capacity, which is further affected by inflation and the change in USD exchange from 1.26 in 2022/23 to 1.34 in 2023/24. In order to balance the budget and maintain current subscription commitments, book lines have been reduced this year. The library will review collecting priorities to decide if any subscriptions should be canceled next year to cover inflation and changes in USD FX rate and/or to restore or increase book lines.

This budget has been set with the assumption of the US/Canadian exchange rate at 1.34. 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:

  1. Serial allocations have been set based on very conservative increases of 2% over the previous year’s expenditures and the increased USD/CAD exchange rate from 1.26 to 1.34. Effectively, this represents an increase of 7.63% to maintain the current subscriptions. In addition, adjustments have been made for new, cancelled or ceased subscriptions, as well as for known increases for high-cost resources. 2% is an optimistic estimate as most increases are likely to be 3-4% or higher.           
  2. To mitigate the impact of the necessary reductions to book allocations, other budget lines were reduced when possible. In addition, rather than a blanket reduction, the library applied smaller reductions to departmental lines that rely heavily on monographs and to smaller funds. Although most book allocations were reduced 10-25%, the projected decrease in purchase power for all book lines, including those allocated the full 2022/23 amount, will be between 5.4% and 26.53% because of the change of USD/CAD FX rate from 1.26 to 1.34.
  3. The library continues to be committed to Open Access but the current levels of funding support are not sustainable. For 2023/24 the Open Access fund lines have been reduced and further review will follow shortly.
  4. Some funds also have adjustments where liaison librarians in consultation with departments requested reductions to book allocations to fund new subscriptions, or where serials were cancelled or ceased and the funds were returned to book allocations.
  5. In the 2022/23 budget the General Ebook Packages fund, supported 5 ebook packages: Taylor & Francis Evidence Based Acquisition model (EBA), Oxford University Press EBA, Cambridge University Press EBA, Elsevier EBA, and the Springer/Palgrave front-list purchase.  Money to support the Academic Canadian University Presses (ACUP) front list is now included in this fund.
  6. As in past years the General Electronic Serials Packages fund pays for the journal packages (Big Deals) from the five largest multi-disciplinary journal publishers: Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Springer, SAGE. This fund also pays for a few smaller publisher journal packages such as Oxford, Cambridge, Emerald and Annual Reviews and some aggregator journal packages such as JSTOR and Project Muse.
  7. The library reduced allocations to the General Ebook Packages fund and the General Electronic Serials Packages for a combined $523,000. This is a one-time reduction because the library paid some invoices for two years. These allocations will need to be restored in 2024/25.

Books includes print books, ebooks and ebook packages.

Serials & Databases includes journals, annuals, monographic series, electronic indexes, full-text journal databases, leased ebook packages, statistical and financial databases, etc.