Rick Anderson de la Marriott Library de la Universidad de Utah nos da las siguiente cifras relativas al presupuesto de su biblioteca .preocupantes diría yo, y no sólo por ajuste en el gasto de adquisición de productos, sino también en el ajuste de plantilla. Creo que nos pueden hacer pensar y recapacitar en estos tiempos de crisis
(De un mensaje a la lista de distribución del consejo editorial de "Serials") --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- University of Utah's budget situation over the past few months has been strange and complex. When the dust had settled from a 17% cut to the University's base budget, the adding back in of one-time federal stimulus money, and the necessarily uneven impact of the budget cuts around campus, the library was left with an 11% cut to the materials budget and the need to eliminate roughly 25 positions through layoffs, retirements, and the cutting of vacant positions. The bulk of the layoffs came from Technical Services, where I consolidated Monographs and Serials into a single Acquisitions unit and let go nearly all of the staff whose work focused on copy cataloging. The materials budget was cut by approximately 10%. To the degree that anything good can come of this, it would be the following: First, the budget cut has finally made it possible to talk in a rational way about waste. We can no longer afford to buy books no one wants, and this is leading us to move in a decisive way towards patron-driven acquisitions processes. Our budget for librarian-instigated firm orders (what I call "speculative buying") has been cut in half. Second, we can no longer afford to spend what are sometimes exorbitant amounts of money (as represented by staff time) in the creation of artisanal-quality catalog records. We are outsourcing almost all of our MARC-based cataloging to OCLC, and shifting catalogers' time to the creation of CONTENTdm records for our huge (and heretofore neglected) digital collections. Third, we are looking very seriously at the purchase of an Espresso Book Machine, which would allow us to meet some patrons' needs by printing books for them in real time. Fourth, we continue to work with ebook providers who offer programs that allow us to place many ebook records in our online catalog and then purchase only those that are actually used by patrons. Most of these initiatives are long overdue; most would have been politically difficult or impossible to push forward without the icewater-in-the-face effect of a massive budget cut. -- Rick Anderson Assoc. Dir. For Scholarly Resources & Collections Marriott Library Univ. of Utah [email protected] ================================================= Asunción Trénor Subdirectora Biblioteca General - Adquisiciones Universidad Politécnica de Valencia Camino de Vera,14 46071 Valencia SPAIN [email protected] tel: 34 96 387 70 82 fax: 34 96 387 70 89 ================================================= ---------------------------------------------------- Los archivos de IWETEL pueden ser consultados en: http://listserv.rediris.es/archives/iwetel.html ----------------------------------------------------
