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. • • -