SFU Library Collections Acquisitions Budget 2024/2025

Here is the 2024-2025 library Collections Acquisitions Budget.

As result of the university’s budgetary challenges, the library’s budget allocation has been reduced for 2024/25. Thankfully, the impact of the reduction will be partly contained since the library received a lift to its base budget to address the effect of US exchange and inflationary increases to library collection costs. The 2024/25 library’s base budget for collections is now $11.198M including $ 2.36M to protect the collection budget from exposure to the USD exchange rate. After this initial raise to sustain current resources and services, the library received a reduction of eight percent.

In order to balance the budget, the library developed a cost reduction plan and is currently reviewing projected expenses for 2024/25. With input from faculty, the library will finalize a list of resources to discontinue. The plan intends to protect departmental fund lines by focusing on reviewing resources currently paid from general library funds.

This budget has been set with the assumption of the US/Canadian exchange rate at 1.34, which is the same rate as in 2023/24. 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. Over 90% of collections expenditures are in USD.

2. In addition to cost savings already identified, projected target amounts were also used to prepare this budget and will assist in guiding the cost reduction process.

3. Serial allocations have been set based on increases of 4.5% over the previous year’s expenditures, in line with the projected subscriptions increase of 4-6% according to the Library Journal’s Periodicals Price Survey 2024 and EBSCO’s 2024 Serials Price Projection Report.

4. The changes to the Central Open Access Fund eligibility and amounts awarded will result in reduced spending overtime but the savings are not expected to be as significant this year since there are still numerous articles previously approved for support that are not yet published. The library continues to support Open Access initiatives with sustainable and equitable models.

5. The 2023/24 General Ebook Packages fund supported 6 ebook packages: Taylor & Francis Evidence Based Acquisition model (EBA), Oxford University Press EBA, Cambridge University Press EBA, Elsevier EBA, the Springer/Palgrave front-list purchase, and the Academic Canadian University Presses (ACUP) front-list purchase. These packages are currently under review and any underperforming package will not be renewed. In such a case, the library will revert to acquiring individual titles.

6. The General Electronic Serials Packages fund continues to pay 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. Some of the 2023/24 allocations were adjusted in the 2024/25 budget to reflect transfers between fund lines for new, cancelled or ceased subscriptions, as well as for known increases for high-cost resources.

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.

The Collections Acquisitions Budget was formerly known as the Materials Budget.