College and Research Libraries


WILLIAM E. McGRATH 

Determining and Allocating Book 

Funds for Current Domestic Buying 

A device is outlined to help formulate the annual book budget request. 
Courses described in the college catalog are matched with the books 
listed in the American Book Publishing Record, BPR, Cumulative 1965. 
Courses, treated as if monographs, are assigned Dewey classification 
numbers and arranged in decimal sequence by groups. Books in BPR 
falling into the groups are tallied; the DC groups are then rearranged 
by departments and the number and cost of books in each are totaled. 
Results are sound estimates of each departments probable current 
domestic book needs for that year and may be applied to the subse-
quent year as an estimate of what will probably be needed. They may 
be used as factors in an allocation formula. 

FOR GENERATIONS, academic librarians 
have been trying to formulate realistic 
budget requests. Annual figures present-
ed to presidents, administrators, and 
other authorities have usually been mere 
estimates or guesses. Requests do not 
always reflect actual needs and are often 
unconvincing. If such figures were more 
soundly generated, as Ralph Ellsworth1 

points out, libraries would have more 
success in getting what they need. 

Two useful figures might be ( 1 ) the 
number and ( 2) the cost of books pub-
lished each year in the United States 
having immediate relevance to each of 
an institution's academic departments. 
These figures, if available, could be used 
in at least two ways .. One, already stated, 
would be to make possible a better esti-
mate of an institution's total current 
domestic book needs, and another would 

1 Ralph Ellsworth, "The Legislature Is Not Con-
vinced," Library Journal, XC (May 15, 1965), 2199-
2203. 

Mr. McGrath is Head Librarian, South 
Dakota School of Mines and Technology, 
Rapid City. 

be as factors in allocating the book budg-
et among the several academic depart-
ments. 

In the past, such figures have been 
hard to find, but since the publication 
of the 1965 cumulative volume of the 
American Book Publishing Record, BPR, 
they have existed. If for this purpose li-
braries can accept the arbitrary limits 
provided by BPR-for example, that books 
must be of forty-nine pages or more-
and can assume that United States pub-
lishing accurately reflects current aca-
demic interest, then BPR is a highly use-
ful tool for determining the annual funds 
needed for current domestic books, and 
for determining appropriate distribution 
of these funds to academic departments. 

BPR's arrangement provides a ready 
made and convenient device-the Dewey 
Decimal classilication-for relating or 
matching its contents to a curriculum. 
As an experiment, the library of the 
South Dakota School of Mines and Tech-
nology employed this device to match 
10,873 BPR titles 2 to the school's aca-

2 Total number of titles in the 1965 BPR cumula-
tion: 28,595. 

I 269 



270 I College & Research Libraries • July, 1967 

TABLE 1 

DEWEY DECIMAL GROUPs, AND THEm 
DEPARTMENTAL LABELS-PARTIAL LIST 

DC Groups 

511-514 
515 
516-518 
519 
526.8 . . . 
526.9-526.98 
530-531.37 
531.38 . 
532 
533-536 
537-538 
539 . 
540-541.344 
541.345 . 
541.346-542 
543-545 
546-547.133 
547.134 

Departments 

Mathematics 
Civil Engineering 
Mathematics 
Computation Center 
Geology 
Civil Engineering 
Physics 
Mining 
Civil Engineering 
Physics 
Electrical Engineering 
Physics 
Chemistry 
Metallurgy 
Chemistry 
Experiment Station 
Chemistry 
Metallurgy 

demic departments. Each of the courses 
listed in the college catalog was assigned 
one or more Dewey numbers. (The Li-
brary uses the LC classification system 
but this did not affect the project.) The 
DC numbers were then arranged in se-
quence (Table 1 ) . The subjects covered 
were sufficiently broad so that most num-
bers fell into groups-thus keeping the 
list of numbers small. In many cases, sub-

. stantial spans of DC numbers were cre-
ated by these groups. Each number, or 
group of numbers, was labeled by the 
name of the department. Since the 
courses were already arranged by de-
partments, the DC numbers, in effect, 
classified each department. Departmen-
tal overlapping was anticipated (two or 
more departments receiving the same 
DC numbers) but little occurred. When 
it did occur, the duplicate numbers usu-
ally fell into the same department. 

All titles in BPR falling within each 
group of Dewey numbers were then tal-
lied. Where two prices were given-for 
example, hard cover and paperback-the 
highest price or hard cover price was 
tallied. Where no price was indicated, 
the table was still counted. 

After the two counts (number of 
books and cost) were completed, the 
groups containing them were rearranged 
according to the original listing-that is, 
by the academic departments (Table 2). 
The counts in the DC groups under each 
department were then totaled. The re-
sults, shown in Table 3, are the num-
ber of books and their cost published in 
the United States having potential rele-
vance to the work in each department. 
The figures, though of the previous year, 
were then applied to the current year 
as an estimate of what would probably 
be needed for the new year's domestic 
output. The assumption was made that 
the number and cost of books as well as 
subject emphases change gradually, not 
drastically, from one year to the next. 
If this were so, the figures would remain 
meaningful and usable. 

Criticism of the tabulation could cite 
its lack of serials, reports, and books of 
forty-eight pages or less. Much of this 
material, of course, comes to the library 
at little or no cost and therefore does 
not greatly affect the budget. If serials 
must be tabulated, however, New Serial 
Titles, Classed Subfect Arrangement pre-
sumably might be used in the same man-
ner as BPR. 

TABLE 2 
DEPARTMENTs AND THEm INCLUSIVE 

DC GROUPS-PARTIAL LIST 

Department 

Chemistry 
Chemistry 
Chemistry . 
Civil Engineering 
Civil Engineering 
Civil Engineering 
Experiment Station 
Geology . 
Mathematics 
Mathematics 
Mathematics 
Metallurgy 
Metallurgy 
Mining 
Physics 
Physics 
Physics 

DC Groups 

540-541.344 
541.346-542 
546-547.133 
515 
526.9-526.98 
532 
543-545 
526.8 
511-514 
516-518 
519 
541.345 
547.134 
531.38 
530-531.37 
533-536 
539 



Determining and Allocating Book Funds 1 211 

TABLE 3 
NUMBER AND ToTAL CosT oF BooKS RELEVANT TO 

EACH DEPARTMENT PUBLISHED IN UNITED STATES IN 1965 

Department 

Biology . . . . 
Chemical Engineering 
Chemistry . . 
Civil Engineering 
Computation Center 
Electrical Engineering . 
Engineering Exp. Station 
Geology . . . . . . 
Social Science & Humanities 
Math . . . . 
Mechanical Engineering 
Metallurgy . 
M~t~orology . 
Mmmg .. . . 
Paleontology (Museum) 
Physical Education . 
Physics 

Another potential criticism is that 
courses described in the college catalog 
do not necessarily encompass faculty re-
search. To avoid this dilemma, DC num-
bers could be assigned to research in 
the same manner as for courses. One 
might assume, of course that unless 
demonstrably otherwise a research proj-
ect would fall into, or close to, the same 
DC groups as a course caught by there-
searcher. 

Number of 
Books Total Cost 

249 $ 2,374 
114 1,397 
274 4,619 
292 2,780 

73 611 
268 2,418 

36 440 
126 1,245 

8,040 45,296 
316 4,917 
291 2,843 

41 1,231 
94 392 
21 243 
26 186 

110 644 
362 4,287 

BPR's deliberate limitation to domes-
tic coverage forbids any extrapolation of 
tabulations made from it to foreign pub-
lishing. Although there is little evidence 
that world-wide publishing emphasis is 
significantly different from that indicated 
by BPR, neither is there evidence that 
it is similar. Therefore, foreign and out-
of-print titles would still be handled on 
an ad hoc basis. 

Some interesting observations can be 

TABLE 4 
NuMBER OF BooKS, AVERAGE CosT, 

AND THEm PERCENTAGE FOR AN ALLOCATION FoRMULA 

DEPARTMENT BooKs CosT 

Number Percentage Average Percentage 

Biology • 0 0 • 249 2.29 $ 9.54 5.53 
Chemical Engineering 114 1.05 12.26 7.10 
Chemistry . . . 274 2.52 16.86 9.77 
Civil Engineering 292 2.69 9.52 5.51 
Computation Center 93 .67 8.33 4.83 
Electrical Engineering . 268 2.47 9.03 5.23 
Engineering Exp. Station 36 .33 12.22 7.08 
Geology 126 1.16 9.88 5.52 
Social Science & Humanities 8,040 73.95 5.63 3.26 
Math 316 3.55 12.74 7.38 
Mechanical Engineering 291 2.68 9.77 5.66 
Metallurgy . 41 .38 9.58 5.55 
Meteorology 94 .87 13.10 7.59 
Mining . . . 21 .19 11.61 6.72 
Paleontology (Museum) 26 .24 7.16 4.15 
Physical Education . • f, : . - ~ -.. 110 1.66 3.58 2.07 
Physics 362 3.33 11.84 6.86 



272 I College & Research Libraries • July, 1967 

made of the tabulation. For example, it 
suggests one possible answer to a prob-
lem which has bothered many librarians 
who allocate to departments: why have 
some departments, over the years, con-
sistently not spent the money allotted to 
them? A frequent answer has been "de-
partmental negligence," but it may some-
times be-as Table 3 shows-that not 
many books having relevance to their 
work have been published each year. 

The technique is of course not infalli-
ble, but if it fails as an argument to con-
trollers of the purse, then the tabula-

CARRELS ... 
(Continued from page 265) 

the students spent ten hours a day or 
more listening to lectures, participating 
in seminars, away on field trips, or work-
ing in the laboratory, there was little 
formal studying. Library facilities were 
practically non-existent, and the students 
were so worn out learning that they had 
no time for studying. They considered 
this program a tremendous learning ex-
perience, which they attributed to the 
availability and proximity of resource 
people and living in a total marine en-
vironment. This was an instance where, 
to use Marshall McLuhan's7 apt phrase, 
environment becomes information with 
the emphasis on discovery -. rather than 
instruction. The students did not read 
in the context of an environment but 
explored the environment itself using 

7 Marshall McLuban, Understanding Media: The Ex-
tensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965). 

tions-number and cost of books-could 
at least be helpful as two factors in an 
allocation formula. In this situation, the 
tabulation could be converted to per- _, 
centages as in Table 4, and the percent-
ages used as scores. At any rate, it ap-
pears clear that such tabulations as these, 
drawn from BPR-or in similar ways 
from other listings-can serve as one 
more device to aid library management 
in the ever-recurrent and knotty prob-
lem of determining appropriate book 
funds and their allocations. 

•• 

all the senses and various tools whi(::h 
became extensions of themselves. 

In this article the authors are less 
concerned with this educational philoso-
phy than in making clear the distinction 
between studying and learning. They 
question the assumption, made by some, 
that new trends toward individual learn-
ing require the sort of study spaces pro-
vided by carrels. To be sure, there is 
no contrary evidence, but the unclarity 
of the situation does seem to warrant 
serious exploration of various methods 
of learning without unnecessary assump-
tions about the prerequisites for learning. 
Clearly a variety of study spaces is re- , 
quired to meet the needs of extroverts 
as well as introverts, lone studiers as 
well as group studiers, people who like 
to type as well as those who want to read 
in easy chairs. Existing data do not ap-
pear to justify placing as much emphasis 
upon individual study carrels as it is, 
in some quarters, currently receiving. • • 

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