The University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries have consistently ranked in the top twenty North American research libraries for many years, based on data collected and published by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) since 1960. While the historical collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society have been recognized for their excellence for more than a century, UW-Madison did not have the resources or the library facilities to build strong research collections until the mid-1950s when strong library leadership in the person of Director Louis Kaplan joined forces with sympathetic university administrators like Dean Mark Ingraham and President Fred Harvey Harrington to push the UW-Madison into the top tier of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).
From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, the funding for collections was generous judged by any historical standard. Acquisitions funding exceeded the supply of readily available books and journals. Bibliographers were sent abroad to buy retrospective collections and hard-to-find materials. The budget for journals was “sum sufficient” – any journal requested by a faculty member was immediately added to the collection and, as a result, duplication of subscriptions by campus libraries was the norm rather than an exception. Lou Kaplan remarked that fellow ARL directors “wondered aloud where he was getting all the money.”
Until recently, UW-Madison was solidly positioned as one of the top ten public university libraries and among the top twenty research libraries when measured against all others, including the great private university and national government libraries.
For the past ten years, UW-Madison has not kept pace with the increasing investments in acquisitions made by other universities. However, UW-Madison has continued to do well in maintaining strong library staffing, a robust technical infrastructure, and good library facilities. The acquisitions budget is one area of conspicuous weakness and continual decline.
UW-Madison ranks 36th among the 120 members of the Association of Research Libraries in expenditures on collections and 11th in the thirteen members of the CIC library consortium. When acquisitions expenditures are compared with 16 peer institutions[1] (as identified by the Office of Budget, Planning and Analysis) over a ten-year period, Wisconsin has fallen steadily in nearly every standard measure. Within this group the UW-Madison Libraries now rank 14th in total materials expenditures, 16th in material expenditures as a percentage of total university expenditures, 17th in material expenditures as a percentage of total library expenditures, and 11th in materials spending per faculty member.
UW-Madison continues to rank highly among ARL libraries in areas related to service and performance. Our campus libraries have comparatively high levels of interlibrary loan and circulation, and high volumes of information delivery services and database usage.
Because the campus libraries have concentrated cuts on subscriptions to high-cost science and technology journals, journal holdings in history, humanities, social sciences, and area studies remain comparatively strong. For example, UW-Madison ranks 3rd among the 120+ ARL libraries in the number of paid journal (serial) subscriptions and 15th in the number of books purchased.
After several years of moderating inflation rates for journals and electronic databases price increases again spiked to over 10 percent in the current fiscal year. One of the reasons for the increased cost was the relative weakness of the dollar against the euro, but this was only one factor. Many publishers simply realized that their high-demand products can command a higher price in the current market. This is also true of non-profit publishers who see that their publications and databases are under-priced in comparison to the extremely high prices of their commercial competitors. For example, the publisher of Nature has announced a 91 percent subscription price increase for one of its core research series – a move being strongly protested by research libraries. The American Chemical Society has increased its journal prices by over 10 percent this year.
Books remain a relatively good bargain, despite recent publicity about student protests of the high cost of textbooks. Most scholarly books are priced at one-fifth to one-tenth the cost per page of scientific journals. Price increases for books closely follow the Consumer Price Index. However, most science disciplines, where price inflation is highest, spend 80 to 95 percent of their acquisitions budget on journals. Improvements in resource sharing have also allowed convenient access to book collections across the UW System and the CIC library consortium. For the present and the future, the fundamental driving force of acquisitions cost increases will continue to be journals and databases.
Overall loss of buying power in the current fiscal year will be just under $1 million for expenditures of approximately $11 million.
Usage data provides the best measure we have of the return on the investment in library collections. According to ARL 2002 data for circulation, interlibrary loan, and use of electronic resources the UW-Madison Libraries have consistently been among the most heavily used academic libraries in the world. For most research databases licensed by the UW System the Madison campus accounts for more than 90 percent of the usage.
Convenient access to library resources via campus networks and the Internet has resulted in steadily increasing usage of UW-Madison library collections. Demand for access to the printed research collections of the UW-Madison and Wisconsin Historical Society remains high. The intensity of research on the Madison campus generates unusually high usage of online journals. For example, when the library investigated the use of the Journal of Comparative Neurology (JCN) after faculty protested the cancellation of this extremely expensive journal, we found that usage of JCN was higher by far at UW-Madison than at any other peer university.
Despite cuts in the journal collection, UW-Madison is a net lender with the CIC research library consortium, in effect, giving more than it gets from the CIC community. According to ARL statistics, UW-Madison is second only to the University of Minnesota in total interlibrary lending to other institutions. (Total lending volume is largely determined by three factors: collection strength, cost of lending fees, and quality of service.)
Our libraries are nationally known for gathering, reporting, and analysis of data on journal use and cost. This information is brought to bear on library decision-making about collection development and resource allocation by this and other research libraries.
The strength of the library is an important consideration for many scholars and researchers. While it may be a lower priority in some fields, it can also be a decisive recruitment factor in others. The UW-Madison Libraries cannot continue to be competitive with peers if the acquisitions budget remains flat.
The gap between the top and second tier of research libraries has widened during the past decade. It is measurable in both spending power and access to information. Michigan, UC Berkeley, and others have nearly double the acquisitions budget of UW-Madison Libraries – this has not been the case since the 1930s. From the point of view of faculty (especially in the sciences), it often appears that the wealthiest university libraries have “everything.” This is because commercial publishers market their journal content as comprehensive journal databases rather than individual journals – an option we cannot currently afford. Consequently, all of the journals published by Elsevier, Wiley InterScience, and others are often conveniently available online at the richest universities. By contrast it seems to many UW faculty that our libraries are continually cutting subscriptions to important research journals.
The UW-Madison Libraries do not have to have “everything” to be competitive. We can continue to support state-of-the-art research if the campus libraries maintain core research collections and provide excellent information access services.
The UW-Madison Libraries have been strongly supported by the university administration during a time of serious budget challenges. The campus libraries received a budget cut of only 2 percent in the current fiscal year, less than half of the budget cut apportioned to other academic programs. Budget increases for acquisitions have totaled $1.7 million dollars, with about half of the increase from the biennial budget and half through the Madison Initiative. A portion of this funding was used to support the rapidly growing interlibrary borrowing and article delivery services. In addition, the library system has received substantial 150 allocations to expand the shelving capacity of the libraries and university archives. New high-density compact shelving was installed in the basement of Steenbock Library that eliminated a long-standing storage problem of the university archives and provided expansion space for the west-campus science libraries. This project cost totaled $740,000 over two fiscal years. Future compact shelving will be added to the basement of Middleton Library using $500,000 that has been provided from campus 150 funds in 2003-04.
The campus has also provided regular additions to the student assistant budget of the General Library System. In 2002-03 the campus provided $72,000 to provide late night library services to student users of the undergraduate library at Helen C. White Hall.
The UW Foundation has also provided sustained support for the campus libraries through private fund-raising activities.
Meeting the information resource needs of a comprehensive research university like UW-Madison is an expensive proposition. Many campus libraries (including Law, Engineering, Health Sciences, Steenbock, and Memorial) have documented substantial unmet needs. We propose a three-year base increase of $2.1 million over three years, adding $700,000 each year.
1. Protect core journal resources in the sciences, particularly in chemistry, biosciences, biotechnology, and medicine. $100,000 per year.
2. Cost to continue for acquisitions in all academic areas with allocations to all major resource libraries of the campus including Law, Health Sciences, Wendt Engineering, CIMC (education), Wisconsin Historical Society, and the member libraries of the General Library System. $400,000 per year.
3. Continued licensing of research databases and continued investment in new models of scholarly and research communication. $200,000 per year.
A three-year investment of $2.1 million will protect the academic information infrastructure for research during a time of rapid transition in scholarly communication. It is an investment that will be highly valued by faculty, academic staff, and students. According to the 2005-07 Biennial Budget Priorities report of the United Council, students would prefer to see their increased tuition go to improvements in campus libraries over nearly all other academic priorities. The funding requested is less than the current rate of aggregated inflation for journals, databases, and books. Even after three years of funding increases for collections, the UW-Madison acquisitions budget will still be less than the average and median of the CIC university libraries. Most importantly, however, $700,000 in annual funding increases for acquisitions will be enough to maintain the core collections that are needed to support UW-Madison’s excellent research programs.
Kenneth Frazier, Director UW-Madison Libraries
December 23, 2003
[1] UC-Berkeley, UCLA, Univ. of Chicago, Illinois at Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Texas, Washington.