CNI Report: Library Budgets -- Re-orienting Where We Spend Our Money Copyright 1994 CAUSE. From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 1994. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Julia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: jrudy@CAUSE.colorado.edu CNI REPORT LIBRARY BUDGETS: RE-ORIENTING WHERE WE SPEND OUR MONEY by Richard P. West ABSTRACT: Where is the potential for improving productivity in the use of electronic networks for academic libraries? The benefits are in reduced costs for inventorying and warehousing--functions that can consume as much as 70 percent of a library's budget. A couple of predictions. First, academic library materials budgets must go up as we increase electronic access to information. Second, cost per unit of information delivered must go down by careful application of information technology if we are to make a reasonable amount of information available in an affordable manner to our faculty and students. CNI was founded on the premise that an essential partnership between the campus librarian and campus information technologist must be formed if higher education institutions are to benefit from the electronic distribution of information. Although these predictions may appear mundane and obvious, they should be quite challenging to some of our librarian colleagues. Librarianship has a long-standing tradition in extending the benefit of information resources through the means of interlibrary lending. A book or journal not held by one library can be easily borrowed at modest cost from another library if the document is not being used at the moment. I suggest that to date, most of our thinking about using information technology has been to reduce the costs of buying information or, stated more directly, using electronic data networks to make the interlibrary loan process more efficient. The logical conclusion is that one copy is available on the network at the price of one copy of the journal or book. In the last issue of _CAUSE/EFFECT_, my column commented on the long term need to recognize that payments for the use of intellectual property will not go down in the electronic environment. Efforts at extending or changing the fair-use or interlibrary lending concepts embodied in copyright law will not be fruitful. The protection of private property rights is a well respected concept in capitalist societies and will only be reinforced more convincingly in electronic environments. The desire to modify copyright law or extend the fair-use and interlibrary lending aspects of today's copyright law for materials on the Internet is an extension of librarianship's tradition of cost sharing. Chasing this rainbow will yield no pot of gold. Where, then, is the potential for improving productivity in the use of electronic networks for higher education? The benefits are in reduced costs per unit in storage, circulation, and distribution. The storage of information in electronic form is more efficient than inventorying and warehousing printed material. Instantaneously obtaining electronic versions of information content (intellectual property), after paying a fee for use, is much easier and quicker in electronic environments than using the physical ways of sharing via traditional inter-library loan. Searching the multitude of automated card catalogs on the Internet, although different from searching a mahogany encased card catalog, can find information much more quickly than traveling to each and every card catalog of the libraries across the land. The savings, if there are to be any, are in re-orienting where we choose to spend our money. Will we continue to spend more on organizing, warehousing, distributing, and searching information about print-based information, rather than shifting money from these warehousing and inventorying functions (about 70 percent of total expenditures in a normal research library) to the materials budgeted? The materials budgeted represents 30 percent of our total expenditures or, more clearly said, a minority share of our money is being spent on one primary objective--information. The premise that the cooperation of librarians and technologists, in using information technology and data networks, can provide opportunities for improving productivity in our library services is an important part of CNI's program. A joint regional meeting on electronic networks and information in early June was co-sponsored by CAUSE and CNI, and the CNI Fall Task Force Meeting will be held just prior to CAUSE94 in Orlando, November 29-30. I urge you to test the assertions I have made by debating them with your library and IT colleagues--why not over lunch? It is the only way to make progress. ************************************************************************ Richard P. West is Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance for the California State University system. He has chaired the steering committee of the Coalition for Networked Information since its establishment in 1990. ************************************************************************ "CNI Report" is a regular CAUSE/EFFECT department that reports on the activities of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), formed by the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and EDUCOM in 1990 to promote the creation of and access to information resources in networked information environments. ************************************************************************ CNI Report: Library Budgets -- Re-orienting Where We Spend Our Money