---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 08:51:49 -0500
From: Marilyn Gane <mgane@ANDREWS.EDU>
Subject: Summary of Periodicals Formulae

Dear Colleagues

Thank you so much for your emails on this topic - both in doucmenting
what you do or have done and in requests for the summary of what I
receive!  It seems many of us have toyed with this idea at one stage or
another, but very few of us have actually found anything suitable to put
into practice.

Here is a summary of the 7 responses received to date where formulae for
periodicals allocation are either being used currently, or have been
used in the past (hopefully I haven't lost the essence of the messages
in the summary):

Library 1. Funding allocated by department according to a complicated
formula - departments advised to spend no more than 60% on periodicals.

Library 2. No formula, but needed to shift funds from monographs and
research funds to pay for expensive databases.

Library 3. The allocation formula was extrapolated to cover all library
materials expenditure for a given department with the result that
serials, proprietary standing orders and monographs were included in one
lump sum: from that one lump sum the department's decisions included
deciding how much of their allocation would be used to support journals,
specific reference materials, monographs. For example sciences spent
more on periodicals, whereas humanities spent more on monographs.  The
sticky parts of this way of allocating expenses came with databases
which were multidisciplinary or reference works and indexes. However,
the
advantage of this system was that it put the entirety of the library's
collection for a given subject area into a more balanced perspective
vis-a-vis the library's total materials expenditure budget, and it
tailored materials acquisitions to the discipline and, hence, the users
of the materials. There were, of course, some basic rules such as that
each discipline did collect some monographs annually which were of a
'general core' nature, and the entirety of an allocated fund could not
be spent in one particular medium (i.e., such as videos or solely
journals -- though there were a couple of extreme exceptions to this).
What it also allowed us to do was to
calculate a cost per major student per department which was also another
interesting figure to be able to use in negotiating all sorts of things.

Library 4. Another library purchases "core" titles, and then allocates
departmental budgets - which cover both books and periodicals.
Departments are discouraged from getting too bogged down with journals
and are encouraged to drop journals if they are available in fulltext
databases. Graduate programs in education and nursing get additional
funding for journals because many of the students are off-campus.

Library 5. A complicated formula understood only by the "budgetmeisters
in Central Accounting" has been abandoned. Now there is one bucket of
money for periodicals and one for monographs - both of which are divided
by department. Program/department bibliographers determine which
monographs and periodicals to order/keep/cancel. Chemistry has a larger
allocation because of the journals required for accreditation, Doctoral
programs also have a larger allocation. Basically the allocations are
based on past experience however some bibliographers are more active
than others and basing allocations on previous years' expenditure may
lead to a "use it or lose it" mindset. They try to allocate 10% more per
department in the
periodicals budget each year to cope with price increases but often the
monograph bucket is dipped into to pay for periodicals. In 2001 a
Library Collection Management Council was formed of both library and
departmental faculty to help evaluate andmonitor both collection
development and any "big" expenditure requests.

Library 6. Library uses a formula they got from Library acquisition
policies and procedures. 2nd ed, edited by Elizabeth Futas. Phoenix, AZ
: Oryx Press, c1984. Weighted formula used by the University of Detroit.
See pages 156-7

Library 7. Created a formula some years ago, but never strictly followed
it. It was based on price per use, Katz score, citation analysis,
faculty request for purchase or valuation as "most essential", along
with enrollment, rates of use and cost of titles. It was used to target
disciplines for added funding however. Monographs are separated from
serials, but the division is almost entirely a departmental decision.
Some disciplines have benefitted unevenly from aggregated full-text
databases, so this library has tried to identify and fund the core, and
then add what they can afford in online full-text. There is a separate
budget for online which is not divided by department.

Finally - our library here at Andrews - we have 3 separate budgets: 1.
monographs - divided by department, 2. periodicals - divided into print
and electronic, and 3. online databases. The monograph allocation was
done according to a formula up until a few years ago, but this has been
modified so many times based on who spent their allocation and who
didn't that there is very little if any of that formula remaining.

The periodicals and online databases are purchased according to need and
then monitored for usage. Two years ago we undertook a major project to
review all our print subscriptions - looking at cost, % increase over x
years, usage, availability of electronic alternatives etc and asked
faculty to value each of the titles on their departmental lists, and
also complete a small survey on their use of journal literature, needs
for accredition, etc . (While we don't allocate funding by department,
we do allocate a departmental code to each journal based on who
requested it for inclusion in the collection. Some journals are on a
number of lists, some only on one.)  Based on this information we were
able to determine which departments would be better served by electronic
journals and/or databases, which needed to retain print, etc. We do have
flexibility to move money around within the periodicals budget, eg if we
cancel print we can move funds to the e-journal budget to fund more
electronic titles.

The e-journal part of the budget includes both e-journal collections and
individual e-journal titles for which we can have perpetual access -
ownership, JSTOR, ECO.  The online database budget covers aggregated
databases - full text, indexes and abstracting for which we only
purchase access.

Thank you again for your input on this topic - hope this summary is
useful to you
Marilyn

  Marilyn Gane