Library & Information Science, Course 266: Collection Development.
Dr. David Loertscher
Fall 2003
c8 budget.html
Suggestions for writing this chapter:
This chapter is one of the more difficult and touchy because it involves collecting data that folks might be reluctant to share. Be very careful as you as for budget figures. You do not want salary data. You only want data from the current or last fiscal year. If you cannot get exact figures, try to get estimaters. Even ball-park figures will help.
Begin the chapter by explaining how the budget works in your library, who is involved, when it happens, and how it is used.
You need to present two budgets in this chapter: the official budget and the emphasis budget.
The official budget is one kept by most institutions to fulfill their obligation to auditors. It ususally contains amounts for materials, equipment and other items. It might be broken down by government funds, grants, money from patron fees, etc. It might also have categories such as books, periodicals, mutlimedia, electronic databases, etc. Create a spreadsheet something like the one in the text that illustrates that you know how the budget works.
Next, introduce the emphasis budget. This is a budget not found in most libraries. It is a proposed budget based on the proposed collection map of the previous chapter. Instead of the traditional budget categories, it targets monies at collection targets: build, maintain, or let it die. A sample is in the text. Take a ballpark figure of money you propose to spend and divide it among the collection building targets. Like the textbook example, you can show how expeditures can be made against each budget target so that at any moment you know where you are in relation to the target.
Finally, discuss the budget makeing process as a part of the collection building process and how your skill at budget control would enhance the collection building process.
Writing This Chapter (Suggestions) (a different set written earlier)
1. Read the textbook chapter about the budget again if you have not already read it. While the concepts presented there are targeted at school libraries, the concept of having two ways to work with the budget is sound for most types of libraries.
2. Obtain the materials budget for your library or the section of the library you are studying (no salaries needed). If you can obtain the budget for the past several years, all the better because you will have data to discuss budget trends for your library.
3. The official budget of the library is legal document and is usually constructed in such a way to satisfy auditors. It may be divided into various categories set up by the state/company against which expenditures must be made. For example, there might be categories for books, subscriptions, supplies, etc. Try to understand these categories and explain the budget and these categories in the beginning of your chapter. Are the official budget categories rigid or relaxed? That is, must money in the book budget be spent for books? Or, can you rob one budget line to pay a bill in another budget line?
4. Who has the power to create a purchase order to expend the money in the budget? You the collection development librarian and whatever clerical or technical staff you have? Don't describe the purchasing process in this chapter, that will happen in the next chapter.
5. Describe what would happen in your institution if you misappropriated funds (went to Hawaii on book budget monies). Is there a system of auditing? Who keeps us honest and accountable?
6. By now, you should have a basic understanding of how the official budget works, how much money you have to spend in the current year, and regulations governing how this money can be and is spent, reported, and managed.
The problem is, that in most institutions, the report of expenditures does not and cannot match your proposed collection map you created in the previous chapter. That is, the budget report you would do for the auditors would contain no information about monies you targeted for various purposes such as building the Civil War collection, maintaining the insect identification collection, starting a new collection to support the Vietnamese speakers in your community.
You should realized that you must be accountable to the auditors and the state or company or board for monies that you spend, but this does not help you be accountable to those who helped you plan the proposed collection map. That is why Loertscher dreamed up two budget documents - one for the auditors, the second (the emphasis budget) for collection development purposes. Study the differences between the official budget and the emphasis budget in the textbook. Remember, one is an official document and kept to the penny. The emphasis budget can be estimates or approximations depending on the type of accounting system you have. Some accounting systems will allow you to set up sub categories within the "book budget" so you could track monies targeted at a part of a collection.
Now you are ready to set up your own emphasis budget.
1. Using your proposed collection map, set up the columns and rows of your own emphasis budget spreadsheet (create an actual spreadsheet or facsimile). You need not have the formulas correct, but the rows and columns must reflect categories that will help you report back to your constituency.
2. Present and defend in your chapter your emphasis budget. How will it help you report back to your advisory group how you spent the money? For example, what happened to the $500 the PTA gave you? Did you really spend the $1,000 budgeted for the Vietnamese collection? How much do you still have left to spend on the marketing collection for small business owners?
3. You may wish to discuss how the library currently is able to report back to groups how collection building targets were achieved. Is there system anything like the Loertscher system? Better? (If you find good ideas, these are the ones to report to the class).
4. Now reflect on the entire budgetary process as you conclude your chapter:
• The mechanism for tracking money through the legal system and being accountable.• The system you can set up to be accountable to those who helped you prepare the the proposed collection map.
• The system you have set up to get your mind around what monies you have, how they were spent, and how they get reported.
If you feel that you can account for the money, where it went, and how to report it, then you are prepared to tackle the first real budget you have as a professional.
There are many games played with money. You may stumble across these games as you investigate. Your cooperating institution may prevent you from learning about the budget lest you discover some of these games or even standard practices. If you are frustrated because you can't find out what you need, you will have to write some fiction trying to imagine and understand what you would do if you were in charge.
Money is always power. To understand the strength of a collection, follow the money.
Notes to those in school libraries:
The state is giving you $28 (now reduced to $1.00) per student. Do you know where that money is and how you can go about spending it?Have you gotten together with the district advisory committee to decide how the money in the district library plan will be spent?
Ideally, the district plan should provide spending targets to support the curriculum in each school. How will you know as a district next year how the money was spent?
Are you prepared to account to the faculty, the school board, and to the CA state legislature how the money was spent? If not, this chapter is the time to plan a system so that you will be prepared. We cannot ask the legislature for more money unless we are prepared to report where the current monies went and what differences they have made.
The Cost of Information
• Professional article (c8b.pdf): Carpenter, Kathryn Hammell. "Competition, Collaboration, and Cost in the New Knowledge Environment," Collection Development Past and Future, The Haworth Press, 1996, p. 31-46. - Describes the expertise needed in a competitive environment to supply information to users in a variety of environments.• Professional article (c8d.pdf): Crawford, Gregory A. and White, Gary W. "Cost-Benefit Analysis of Electronic Information: A Case Study," College & Research Libraries, November 1998, p. 503-510. - The decision to acquire or provide a particular product or service should involve an examiniation of its costs and benefits to library customers. One technique for analyzing cost-effectiveness is to perform a cost benefit-analysis (CBA).
Book Prices
• Professional article (c8c.pdf): Gerhardt, Lillian N. "Average Book Prices '98," School Library Journal, March, 1998, p. 79. - How much do books for kids and teens cost? R.R. Bowker collects these figures each year and they are available for all types of materials from The Bowker Annual..• For those in public and academic libraries, The Bowker Annual usually reports the average prices of books and periodicals each year in many different categories. These are valuable data to forcast how much money will be needed to build parts of the collection.