U.Va. Library Budget FAQs
Library Budget Cuts For Fiscal Year 2009-2010
The University Library will now cut its budget by an additional 2.5%, or $535,000. This is in addition to the 3.2% cut, or $720,000, that we made at the beginning of this fiscal year.
Information on changes you might see—and some you won’t—is below. We welcome your thoughts and suggestions: please send them to librarybudgetideas@list.mail.virginia.edu.
How much is the Library’s annual budget?
About $23.6 million in state and unrestricted funds.
How is that currently allocated?
The budget is allocated into 23% ($5.4 million) for collections, 12% ($2.9 million) for operations, and 65% (15.3 million) for salaries and fringe benefits. (The Library has 231 full-time employees.)
Did you follow any overall principles as you planned these cuts?
Yes. We are doing our best to protect student jobs, hours of access, and services for faculty and students.
What will change with this new 2.5% cut?
We are continuing to freeze all staff vacancies. We will also be cutting the collections budget by $400,000 by canceling an e-journal collection that has high cost and low use, and by increasing efficiencies in how we buy books.
Are you going to cut any hours?
At the moment, no. We are looking at traffic patterns in our smaller facilities and may reduce late-night and/or early-morning hours in those locations. We haven’t made that decision yet.
What are you going to cut from the collections?
This fiscal year we will not be renewing the 1,169 journals we subscribed to through Taylor and Francis publications. All articles will be available through Interlibrary Loan. Here is a full list of the titles affected by this budget cut.
Managing the Library’s vast collections is an ongoing process. We are always listening for faculty and student interests, reviewing pricing and values of individual resources, and developing ways to make the collections management responsive to faculty and student needs. Going forward, we will be moving toward a more patron-driven collections strategy that relies less on automatic purchasing and more on individual or departmental interest. We will reduce the number of books we buy on approval, and encourage more purchase requests. We will also be launching a collections blog in the near future where you can learn more about what’s going on with the collections.
What’s coming next with your budget situation?
We will be submitting a plan to the Provost that contains details on the 2.5% cut as well as a plan for cutting 3.5%, or $737,000, from the budget for the upcoming fiscal year (FY 10-11, which starts in July 2010).
As part of that 3.5% cut for next fiscal year, we will discontinue hourly, non-student wage positions by June 2010. We are working on plans to meet the rest of the cut.
Where can I find the "big picture" about all these budget cuts?
Visit http://www.virginia.edu/budgetimpact/ for details on the overall U.Va. budget and links to state information.
