College and Research Libraries


Materials Budgets in the 
Electronic Age: A Survey of 
Academic Libraries· 

Frank R. Allen 

Academic libraries face a host of expenditures for products and ser-
vices, which, though not materials per se, provide access to materials. 
The extent to which libraries fund these services through materials bud-
gets is the focus of a survey of academic librarians in the United States 
and Canada. In September 1994, the author sent questionnaires to the 
head librarians of 230 academic libraries. The survey generated a 76.9 
percent response rate. Over two-thirds of the respondents indicated they 
allocate less than six percent of their materials budgets to nondata re-
sources. Seven out of ten respondents agree, however, that it is natural 
for materials budgets to absorb certain technology costs. In addition, 
only 23 percent think that materials budgets should be limited to materi-
als in a traditional sense. These findings suggest that most librarians 

. are continuing to allocate materials budgets in a traditional manner, while 
recognizing the inevitable shifts in allocation of scarce resources. 

IIJi!lii!!!!• he evolution of the electronic 
library is forcing librarians to 
examine critically how to allo-
cate scarce financial resources 

in academic libraries. Libraries face grow-
ing outlays for products, systems, and 
services in support of electronic access 
and delivery. Examples include computer 
software, computer hardware, file storage 
costs, software and hardware mainte-
nance, preprocessing and servicing, and 
licensing fees. Because they are relatively 
new phenomena, these services typically 
have little, if any, dedicated funding. 
Therefore, librarians are looking for ways 
to pay for these new services. Do librar-
ians fund these nontraditional expenses 

from the materials budget, operating 
funds, outside funding, or some combi-
nation of all three sources? The tradition-
alist may object to using the materials 
budget on the grounds that it is philo-
sophically inappropriate as well as ill-
timed, given the erosion of purchasing 
power from two decades of serials infla-
tion. Others may object to using the op-
erating budget if it crowds out essential 
operating needs. If the library is not able 
to find the funding internally, it faces the 
task of persuading campus or outside 
agencies to support these needs. In an era 
of higher-education downsizing, this can 
be a challenge. Furthermore, campus 
budget offices and outside agencies do 

Fra nk R. Allen is Head, Administrative Services, University Library Services, Virginia Commonwealth 
University, Richmond; e-mail: frallen@gems.vcu.edu. 

133 



134 College & Research Libraries 

not always comprehend this library trans-
formation and the resulting shift in fund-
ing requirements. 

Literature Review 
A ten-year retrospective review of library 
and information science literature reveals 
a widening arc of discussion on the re-
sources appropriately funded through the 
materials budget. Several position papers 
published in 1986 and 1987 discuss the 
practice of funding online search costs 
through the materials budget. Jay Martin 
Poole and Gloriana St. Clair argue that 
online search costs deserve a place in the 
materials budget by satisfying legitimate 
educational and research needs. The prac-
tice should be only a temporary measure, 
however, until library administrators are 
able to secure separate and permanent 
funding for online searching. 1 

Sheila Dowd, John Whaley Jr., and 
Marcia Pankake offer three opposing ar-
guments. Dowd equates providing online 
search services with spending money on 
multiple reserve copies. Every dollar li-
brarians divert from acquisitions to on-
line searches is money that will not be 
available to build a broad and balanced 
array of titles. 2 Whaley argues that the 
practice of funding online searches from 
materials budgets has little to do with phi-
losophy in most libraries. When funding 
is tight, he points out, librarians can more 
easily tap materials budgets funds than 
heavily encumbered operating budgets, 
thus making this a pragmatic process. 3 

Pankake agrees with Whaley and adds 
that materials budgets are vulnerable to 
"raids." She asserts that librarians are 
confusing the provision of access with the 
provision of information. Both activities 
are proper missions of the library, but each 
should have separate funding sources.4 

In a 1987 follow-up to the 1986 C&RL ar-
ticles, Ann Bristow Beltran suggests that 
the underlying remote database from 
which an online search is extracted is it-
self a reusable resource. By charging re-
mote database costs to the materials bud-

March 1996 

get, librarians are helping to fund this 
resource and continue its availability.5 

In 1990, Peggy Johnson surveyed 
members of the ARL on issues related to 
trends in materials budgets and pub-
lished her findings in Materials Budgets in 
ARL Libraries, SPEC Kit #166. 6 She reports 
that libraries are using materials budgets 
in the following ways: computer files 
such as diskettes, mainframe tapes, and 
CD-ROM (87% of respondents); remote 
database searching costs (32.9%); and com-
puter hardware (15.2%). The study also 
surveyed librarians on the funding sources 
for materials budgets in their libraries 
and on which persons in the organiza-
tion make allocation decisions. 

In a 1993 article, Ross Atkinson asserts 
that the acquisitions budget should be 
integrated into the broader library and 
institutional budgetary process. 7 He sug-
gests that the success librarians have en-
joyed in protecting the purchasing power 
of materials budgets may be draining 
potential resources away from other li-
brary operating needs. He points out that 
libraries cannot thrive and prosper by 
increasing materials budgets alone, as if 
to say that information can be made ac-
cessible by merely purchasing it. Ironi-
cally, he argues, this channeling of re-
sources exclusively into acquisitions bud-
gets may now be working to the detri-
ment of information services as a whole. 

Nancy Eaton discusses financial issues 
related to collection development in an 
address at the 1993 Advanced Collection 
Management and Development Insti-
tute.8 She argues that the key to provid-
ing additional library funding is in de-
veloping greater cooperation among uni-
versity libraries, media centers, comput-
ing centers, and telecommunications cen-
ters. This will in turn create economies of 
scale, less redundancy, and opportunities 
for departmental specialization. Eaton 
suggests that librarians need to harness 
automation synergies on campuses. Cam-
pus partners are not necessarily operat-
ing in a zero-sum environment in which 



Materials Budgets in the Electronic Age 135 

one unit's gain automatically creates an-
other unit's loss. 

In a 1994 article, Jerry Campbell argues 
that the advent of technology applications 
in libraries necessitates the need for an 
entirely new budget modeJ.9 In the early 
days, libraries successfully funded incre-
mental advances in automation. How-
ever, the scope of funding needs for tech-
nology is now too great to absorb with-
out a fundamental change in how librar-
ians allocate resources. Given what he 
characterizes as the aversion most librar-
ians have to drastic change, he proposes 
that they devise transitional budgets that 
reduce expenditures for personnel and 
print-on-paper, and correspondingly in-
crease expenditures for technology and 
electronic distribution of information. 

Design and Response 
The literature survey produces a wealth 
of relevant position papers, but few re-
ports of actual practice. This paper reports 
on the findings of a survey that measured 
how academic libraries currently allocate 
materials budgets and, specifically, to 
what extent libraries are using acquisition 
funds for what will be referred to as "ma-
terials support resources." Materials sup-
port resources are defined as those services 
and products that directly facilitate access 
to, and delivery of, information but do 
not represent analog or digital collection 
material. The survey also measured aca-
demic library heads' opinions on how li-
braries should be allocating scarce re-
sources in an ideal scenario. 

Asking librarians to reveal the extent 
to which they are spending "materials" 
budgets on items other than materials is 
somewhat forward and increases the pos-
sibility of a low-response rate. In an ef-
fort to ensure a meaningful response rate, 
the author utilized a formula-driven ap-
proach established by Don Dillman in his 
work Mail and Telephone Surveys: The To-
tal Design Method. 10 

After extensive drafting, reviewing, 
and pretesting, the author sent the final 

survey to the heads of 230 academic li-
braries in the United States and Canada 
in September 1994. This target audience 
consisted of the 122 academic libraries 
surveyed biennially by the ACRL and the 
108 academic members of the ARL. Re-
spondents returned 177 surveys for a re-
sponse rate of 76.9 percent. Survey results 
and a secondary analysis with separate re-
sponses for ARL and ACRL libraries are 
available from the author upon request. 

Findings 
Background Characteristics 
Some background information on the 
demographic profile of the respondents 
helps to frame the survey data. Question 
one asked respondents to indicate the size 
of the library's materials budget. Approxi-
mately 55 percent of respondents reported 
a budget size of less than $3 million. These 
libraries are referred to as "smaller librar-
ies." The remaining 45 percent of the sur-
vey population reported a materials bud-
get size of at least $3 million. These are re-
ferred to as "larger libraries." 

Materials support resources are 
defined as those services and 
products that directly facilitate 
access to, and delivery of, informa-
tion but do not represent analog or 
digital collection material. 

Knowing who responded to the sur-
vey may help the reader better appreci-
ate the answers to opinion questions. 
Question eighteen asked respondents to 
identify their title within the library. 
Slightly more than 72 percent of respon-
dents identified themselves as either 
deans, directors, university librarians, or 
campus heads of information technology. 
The remaining 18 percent identified 
themselves as either assistant/ associate 
directors, heads of collection develop-
ment, heads of administrative services, 
or heads of acquisitions, in that order of 
frequency. 



136 College & Research Libraries March 1996 

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Materials Budgets in the Electronic Age 137 

Use of the Materials Budget 
The survey defined the term materials bud-
get as that pool of funds used in the library 
to acquire and provide access to materials 
and sources of information. Question 2 
asked what types of expenditures the 
library's materials budget funds. The ques-
tion is restated here because of its impor-
tance to the study: 

Q-2. For the most recent fiscal year, 
how many of the following types of ex-
penditures were funded out of the mate-
rials budget? Circle as many as are appli-
cable (circle number) . 

1) Monographs 
2) Serials an~ Journals 
3) Films, Videos, Sound Recordings, 

Microforms 
4) Computer Readable Text, Indexes, 

Abstracts (CD-ROM, mainframe 
tapes, disks) 

5) Remote Database Searching (online 
search costs) 

6) Application Software for Patron 
Education 

· 7) Computer Hardware (public ac-
cess catalog terminals or PCs, CD 
ROM workstations, hardwiring 
costs, campus mainframe comput-
ers to support OPACs) 

8) Computer Hardware Maintenance 
(vendor contracts or repair) 

9) Computer Software to Facilitate Ma-
terials Access (loaders, drivers, etc.) 

10) Computer Software Maintenance 
(vendor contracts) 

11) Materials Preprocessing and Ser-
vicing (OCLC, SOLINET, etc.) 

12) Binding and Preservation 
13) Interlibrary Loan Expenses (copy-

ing charges, loan charges, other) 
14) Membership Dues in National or 

Regional Library Networks 
15) Wages (please specify which de-

partments) 
16) Other (please specify, if possible) 

Virtually all respondents are purchas-
ing monographs, serials, and audiovisual 
materials from the materials budget. Ap-

proximately 99 percent of respondents are 
funding computer-readable text and in-
dexes (CRT in figure 1) from the materi-
als budget, whether it be CD-ROM, main-
frame tape, or floppy disk media. Roughly 
forty-three percent of respondents are 
funding remote online search service (OSS) 
costs through the materials budget. Thir-
teen percent of respondents are charging 
the cost of application software (Educsw) 
to the materials budget. 

Thirteen and 12.4 percent, respectively, 
of respondents fund hardware (HWare) 
and software (Sware) through the mate-
rials budget. Seven and nine percent, re-
spectively, fund hardware (Hmaint) and 
software (Smaint) maintenance costs 
through the materials budget. Thirty-nine 
of the 177 survey respondents, or 22 per-
cent, charge one or more of the aforemen-
tioned four automation-related expendi-
tures to the materials budget. Only six re-
spondents, or 3.4 percent, charge all four 
of these expenditures to the materials 
budget. 

Roughly one-quarter (23.2 %) of librar-
ies charge the costs of materials prepro-
cessing (PrePro) to the materials budget. 
Seven out of ten (70.6 %) respondents 
charge binding and preservation (B&P) 
costs to the materials budget, reflecting 
an established practice in academic librar-
ies. One-third of libraries charge interli-
brary loan expenses to the materials bud-
get. Slightly more than one-third (36.7%) 
charge membership dues to the materi-
als budget. Only 3.4 percent pay wages 
from the materials budget. A handful of 
respondents wrote under "Other" that 
they charge document delivery costs to 
the materials budget. 

Figure 1 shows the results in question 
two partitioned by library budget size. 
Larger libraries are slightly more likely 
than smaller libraries to charge remote 
OSS costs to the materials budget, by a 
margin of 47 to 40 percent. Larger librar-
ies are twice as likely as smaller libraries 
to charge dues for consortia! networks to 
materials budgets. Smaller libraries show 



138 College & Research Libraries March 1996 

TABLE 1 
Percentage of Materials Budget Spent on Materials Support 

Larger Larger Smaller Smaller Overall 
Public Private Public Private 

None 5.5% 45.0% 8.8% 10.5% 12.1% 

Less than 3% 29.0 15.0 43 .9 39.5 34.7 
3.0% to 5.9% 30.9 20.0 17.5 26.3 24.8 
6.0% to 8.9% 18.3 15.0 15.8 7.9 14.5 
9.0% to 11.9% 14.5 0.0 ,7.0 7.9 8.7 
Over 12% 1.8 5.0 7.0 7.9 5.2 
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 
Number in set (N) N=55 N=20 N=57 N=38 N=173* 

*Several institutions did not identify size and type. Figure in this column is total 
number of institutions that answered the question. 

a higher tendency to charge hard ware-
and software-related costs to the materi-
als budget. 

In questions three and four, the author 
asked respondents to limit their answers 
to the subset of items numbered seven 
through sixteen in question two. These 
items constitute that set previously de-
fined as the library's materials support 
resources. The results show that 12.1 per-
cent of libraries charge none of these costs 
to the materials budget. Fifty-nine percent 
allocate trace to six percent of the materi-
als budget to these costs. Twenty-eight 
perce:r;tt of libraries spend at least six per-
cent of the materials budget on materials 
support resources. 

The data show that academic 
libraries overwhelmingly depend on 
university entitlements for funding 
of materials budgets and that, as a 
group, libraries generate very few 
independent funds. 

Regression analysis reveals no statis-
tical correlation between budget size and 
the degree to which the materials budget 
is spent on materials support resources. 
With budget size set as the independent 
variable (X) and data from question three 
set as the dependent variable (Y), the 

analysis produced an r-squared value of 
less than .05. This suggests that less than 
five percent of the variation in the an-
swers to question three is attributable to 
how the respondent answered question 
one. The analysis is limited in that it uses 
ranges of values rather than data points. 
The significance of this factor is unknown 
but would logically contribute to a lower 
r-squared value. 

Table 1 segments the data from ques-
tion three by institution size and type. 
Larger public institutions are slightly 
more likely than the group as a whole to 
fund materials support resources from the 
materials budget, whereas larger private 
libraries are the least likely. Fully 45 per-
cent of larger private institutions spend 
none of their materials budgets on mate-
rials support resources. This does not sug-
gest that size and affiliation are statisti-
cally predictive of spending behavior, but 
this may be a meaningful observation 
when viewed as part of an overall pat-
tern. · 

In answering question four, survey re-
spondents indicated to what extent they 
are dedicating a greater or lesser amount 
of their materials budget to materials sup-
port resources than they were three years 
ago. Slightly less than two-thirds (62.9 %) 
of the respondents responded that they 
spend about the same amount propor-



Materials Budgets in the Electronic Age 

TABLE2 
Percentage of Materials Budget Spent on Materials Support 

Rate of Change Last Three {3) Years 

Larger Larger Smaller Smaller Overall 
Public Private Public Private 

Stayed about same 63.6% 73.7% 64.9% 55.6% 62.9% 
Increased 25.5 15.8 19.3 27.7 23.6 
Increased significantly 5.4 10.5 7.0 13.9 8.2 
Decreased 5.5 0.0 8.8 2.8 5.3 
Decreased significantly 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 
Number in set (N) N=55 N=19 N=57 N=36 N=l70+ 

+Several institutions did not identify size and type. Figure in this column is total number 
of institutions that answered the question. 

139 

tionately on materials support resources 
as compared fo three years earlier. 
Roughly one-third (31.8%) spend a higher 
percentage on materials support re-
sources, and approximately one in twenty 
(5.3%) spend less proportionately. 

vate. libraries are not utilizing any of the 
materials budget for materials support . 
resources. 

Table 2 partitions the data from ques-
tion four by institution size and affilia-
tion. The differences are generally slight. 
Larger private libraries are the least likely 
to have increased or increased signifi-
cantly the percentage of the materials 
budget spent on materials support re-
sources in the past three years. This is 
logical given that 45 percent of larger pri-

External Factors 
Questions five, six, and seven examined 
some of the external factors that may be 
influencing how libraries allocate mate-
rials budgets. In question five, respon-
dents identified the sources of funding for 
the materials budget in their library. The 
data show that academic libraries over-
whelmingly depend on university entitle-
ments for funding of materials budgets 
and that, as a group, libraries generate 

TABLE3 
Sources of Materials Budget Funding 

Larger Larger Smaller Smaller Overall 
Public Private Public Private 

Educational 88.1% 81.4% 90.2% 85.0% 87.7% 
& General (E&G) 

One-time funding 2.8 3.8 4.7 0.3 2.8 
Overhead funds 5.1 0.1 2.2 5.3 3.6 
Grants/endowments 3.3 14.2 2.2 9.3 5.5 
Cost recoveries/other 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.0 0.3 
Total* 99.8% 100.1% 99.9% 99.9% 100.1% 
Number in set (N) N=57 N=21 N=56 N=38 N=174+ 
*Percentages do not always add to 100 due to rounding. 
+Several institutions did not identify size and type. Figure in this column is total 

number of institutions that answered the question. 



140 College & Research Libraries March 1996 

TABLE4 
Sources of Funding for Materials Support Other Than Materials Budgets 

Percentage of Libraries Using Alternate Sources 

Larger Larger 
Public Private 

Library Operating 98.2 % 90.0% 
Funds 

Library Capital Funds 76.8 75.0 
Library Overhead 19.6 15.0 

Funds 
Library Cost 41.1 20.0 

Recoveries 
Campus Computing 17.9 35.0 

Centers 

Gifts and Other 16.1 15.0 

very few independent funds. Recurring 
ed~cational funds provide 87.7 percent of 
materials budget funds for the group as 
a whole. Grants and endowments pro-
vide the next largest source of funds at 
5.5 percent, followed by overhead funds, 
one-time allocations, and cost recoveries, 
in that order. 

Table 3 shows the data from question 
five broken down by institutional size 
and affiliation. Larger private libraries are 
the most successful in generating gift and 
endowment funds, deriving an average 
of 14.2 percent of materials budget fund-
ing from gifts and endowments. Smaller 
private institutions derive 9.3 percent of 

. . . in the past three years, approxi-
mately one-third of surveyed 
institutions increased that portion of 
the materials budget dedicated to 
materials support. 

materials funding from gifts and endow-
ments. Comparable figures for larger 
public and smaller public libraries are 3.3 
and 2.2 percent, respectively. 

In question six, respondents indicated 
what sources, aside from the materials 
budget, customarily fund materials sup-
port resources. The data show that virtu-

Smaller Smaller Overall 
Public Private 

94.6% 100.0% 95 .8% 

67 .9 78.8 73 .8 
10.7 3.0 12.5 

21.4 24.2 28.6 

17.9 21.2 20.8 

5.4 18.2 13.1 

ally all libraries rely on operating funds 
to pay for materials support resources. 
Three-fourths of respondents (73.8 %) use 
equipment or capital allocations. One-
fifth (20.8 %) of the survey population co-
sponsors costs of materials support re-
sources with campus computing centers. 
Sixteen respondents wrote that gifts and 
endowments support the cost of materi-
als support resources. 

Table 4 shows the same data broken 
down by size and affiliation. Larger pub-
licly supported libraries are more likely 
than the population as a whole to use cost 
recoveries to fund materials support re-
sources. This may partially be explained 
if the larger libraries are more likely to 
generate cost recoveries for any purpose . 
Over one-third of larger private libraries 
are cost-sharing materials support re-
sources with campus computing centers, 
almost twice the rate of other institutions. 
This is noteworthy in light of the earlier 
finding that larger private libraries spend 
less of their materials budget on nondata 
and are the least likely of the four library 
types to change the percentage of the 
materials budget dedicated to nondata 
resources. Approximately one-fifth of 
larger public libraries use overhead funds 
to pay for materials support resources, ver-
sus only three percent of smaller private 



Materials Budgets in the Electronic Age 141 

institutions. In summary, the larger librar-
ies generally enjoy a wider variety of fund-
ing sources than the smaller libraries. 

Question seven measured the amount 
of influence various external units exer-
cise over how the materials budget is al-
located. The data yielded no surprises, 
with library faculty ranked as the most 
influential group. Several respondents 
interpreted this question as asking how 
much influence external entities exert in 
establishing the monetary size of the ma-
terials budget. Variations in interpretation 
limit the usefulness of data from this 
question. 

Opinion Questions 
Questions nine through seventeen con-
sisted of a series of statements of opin-
ion. Respondents agreed or disagreed 
using a standard Likert scale. These ques-
tions gave respondents an opportunity to 
voice personal opinions on a wide vari-
ety of questions related to allocations of 
budgets in libraries. Answers provide an 
interesting contrast to practice. 

Question nine generated strong agree-
ment, with 83.4 percent of respondents 
agreeing or strongly agreeing that the 
practice of funding nonmaterials re-
sources from the materials budget is a 
continuation of a long-standing trend. 
Question ten also registered strong agree-
ment. When asked if it is natural that the 
materials budget absorb certain technol-
ogy costs, seven out of ten respondents 
agreed or agreed strongly. Less than sev-
enteen percent disagreed with question 
ten. Question eleven generated the great-
est scattering of responses. Slightly less 
than 40 percent of respondents agreed or 
strongly agreed that their institution 
funds nonmaterials resources from the 
materials budget because they cannot 
find alternative funding sources. This is 
precisely the pragmatic rationale that 
Whaley suspected influenced many li-
brarians in the late 1980s to begin charg-
ing online search costs to the materials 
budget. 11 However, this question regis-

tered as much disagreement as agreement, 
with 41.3 percent disagreeing or strongly 
disagreeing. Interestingly, respondents 
from larger libraries were more likely to 
agree with this statement than those from 
smaller libraries. Forty-three percent of 
respondents from libraries with materi-
als budgets exceeding $3 million agreed 
or strongly agreed with question eleven, 
whereas 35.2 percent of respondents from 
smaller libraries agreed. 

Questions twelve through fifteen mea-
sured views on broader budget issues. 
These questions measured the extent to 
which librarians are able or unable to dis-
tinguish between departmental units and 
the impact this may have on budgeting 
practices. The findings are mixed, with 
77.9 percent of respondents agreeing that 
the separation between intralibrary de-
partments is becoming less clear. How-
ever, only a slight majority (56.5 %) agree 
that departmental budgets are becoming 
less meaningful. 

Questions sixteen and seventeen 
complement questions nine through 
eleven. In question sixteen, only 23.1 per-
cent agree that academic library materi-
als budgets should be limited to materi-
als in a traditional sense, with 67 percent 
disagreeing. In question seventeen, 44.2 
percent agree that using the materials 
budget for ever-increasing nonmaterials 
purchases will create a dependency that 
will undermine the materials budget and 
weaken the collection. Forty-five percent 
disagree with this statement. 

Observations and Comparisons with 
Earlier Studies 
The data reveal a mixed set of observa-
tions. As a whole, libraries are dedicat-
ing relatively small amounts of materials 
budgets to "materials support." Con-
versely, in the past three years, approxi-
mately one-third of surveyed institutions 
increased that portion of the materials 
budget dedicated to materials support. 
Comparisons between large and small in-
stitutions also are mixed. Of the four li-



142 College & Research Libraries 

brary types identified in the study, smaller 
private institutions are the most likely to 
be changing the mix of the materials bud-
get. However, regression analysis reveals 
no statistical correlation between library 
size and the degree to which libraries 
fund materials support from the materi-
als budget. 

In their responses to opinion questions, 
librarians show similarly ambivalent at-
titudes to those held by earlier authors in 
the 1980s when asked about funding on-
line search costs. In question ten, 70 .3 
percent of respondents agree that as the 
"container type" evolves, it is natural for 
certain technology costs to be absorbed 
by the materials budget. In question 
eleven, just under 40 percent of respon-
dents state they fund nonmaterials re-
sources through the materials budget be-
cause they are having difficulties finding 
the funding elsewhere. The difference 
between today' s discussions and those of 
the 1980s is largely one of scale. A decade 
ago, librarians spoke out on how to most 
appropriately fund online search costs 
totaling several or tens of thousands of 
dollars annually. In today's environment, 
librarians are struggling to fund support 
costs in the hundreds of thousands of 
annual dollars for medium-size libraries, 
and millions of annual dollars for re-
search institutions. Libraries have 
reached a point where the issue of which 
internal source to use to fund materials 
support is becoming moot. They will be 
unable to pay for these spiraling costs 
from any internal source without a major 
infusion of funding or major budget 
reengineering. As Campbell points out, 
libraries have reached the point where 
they can no longer afford the full cost of 
automation and still maintain the status 
quo environment. 12 

Interestingly, librarians have contrib-
uted to this dilemma. As Atkinson 
(among numerous others) points out, 
some of the very successes libraries have 
had in the past twenty years in preserv-
ing the purchasing power of acquisitions 

March 1996 

budgets have quite possibly reduced 
funding for other, equally important ar-
eas of the library. 13 If this is true, it is no 
wonder that some libraries are using 
materials budgets to fund purchases that 
are, in the opinion of some observers, 
more appropriately funded from other 
budgets. Furthermore, campus adminis-
trators may have developed the mistaken 
notion that the institution is adequately 
meeting the library's needs simply by 
maintaining acquisitions budgets. 

Scenarios for the Future 
Libraries, which face serious funding di-
lemmas and which do not have external 
funding available, may want to consider 
alternate scenarios. In the first scenario, 
the library radically reallocates internal 
resources, as advocated by Campbell. 14 

This is painful and may best be accom-
plished over time. In the second scenario, 
the library works collaboratively with 
campus computing units to cosponsor the 
costs of materials support. Both these sce-
narios implicitly recognize that distinc-
tions between traditional library units are 
getting fuzzier. This is borne out in the 
answers to question fourteen, in which 
77.9 percent of respondents agree that the 
separation between library departments 
is becoming more unclear. Other sce-
narios include enhanced fundraising and 
development efforts, and partnering with 
outside private interests. 

Librarians need to recognize that they 
are no longer the exclusive gatekeepers 
of information access, storage, collection, 
and dissemination. At the same time, they 
need to promote, defend, and champion 
their mission on campus. By opening the 
doors to jointly sponsored funding of 
materials support with other campus 
units, it is hoped that libraries will secure 
new sources of funding. Finally, by look-
ing closely at internal processes and 
reengineering, where necessary, librar-
ians may be able to help solve some of 
their own funding problems and better 
position themselves for the future. 



Materials Budgets in the Electronic Age 143 

Suggestions for Further Study and 
Conclusion 
The statistical studies, which are pub-
lished annually and biannually by ARL 
and ACRL, may offer additional informa-
tion to augment this study. For instance, 
those studies could be used to estimate 
the amount of library materials budgets 
being spent on binding and preservation. 
This figure then could be compared to 
data from this study to provide a truer 
gauge of the current impact of nondata 
resources on materials budgets, exclusive 
of binding and preservation. 

Mail surveys are difficult to design and 
evaluate, and this survey proved no excep-
tion. The primary difficulty stems from a 
lack of opportunity for surveyor and re-
spondent to interact. An additional chal-
lenge arose from trying to gather both sta-
tistical data and opinion in one study, while 
also maintaining a reasonable length. 

The survey response of 177 institutions 
presents a sufficient set of data from 
which to make some observations. How-
ever, as with any survey data, findings 
are qualified at best. Several respondents 

complained about a lack of definitions 
and imprecise language in the survey re-
turns. Selected question~ in some re-
sponses were unanswered. Fortunately, 
the number of unanswered questions did 
not exceed five percent of responses for 
any one question. 

Some of the data subsets were small. 
Only twenty-one respondents fell into the 
classification of "larger private institu-
tion." Had one or two of these respon-
dents answered questions differently, it 
would have affected the percentages in 
this subgroup significantly. 

The findings of this study are based on 
survey data gathered in the fall of 1994. 
Operating results are based on library fi-
nancial data from fiscal years 1993-94. 
Events are happening quickly. Undoubt-
edly, the fiscal, technological, and politi-
cal environment in our academic librar-
ies will have changed by the time this 
study is published. The author hopes that 
this study will have retained some of its 
usefulness to the academic community, 
while also recognizing that the data may 
have historical value. 

Notes 

1. Jay Martin Poole and Gloriana St. Clair, "Funding Online Services from the Materials Bud-
get and Reactions," College & Research Libraries 47 (May 1986): 225-37. 

2. Sheila Dowd, John H. Whaley Jr., and Marcia Jean Pankake,"Reactions to 'Funding Online 
Services from the Materials Budget,"' College & Research Libraries 47 (May 1986): 230-32; reaction 
by Sheila Dowd. 

3. Ibid., 232-34; reaction by John H. Whaley Jr .. 
4. Ibid., 234-37; reaction by Marcia Jean Pankake. 
5. Ann Bristow Beltran, "Funding Computer-Assisted Reference in Academic Research Li-

braries," Journal of Academic Librarianship 13 (Mar. 1987): 4-7. 
6. Peggy Johnson, Materials Budgets in ARL Libraries, SPEC Kit #166 (Washington, D.C.: ARL, 

1990). 
7. Ross Atkinson, "Crisis and Opportunity: Reevaluating Acquisitions Budgeting in an Age 

of Transition/' Journal of Library Administration 19 (1993) : 33-55. 
8. Nancy L. Eaton, "Computtng Resources: Opportunities and Challenges in Institutional 

Cooperation," in Collection Management and Development: Issues in an Electronic Era (Chicago: 
ALA, 1994): 80-91. 

9. Jerry D. Campbell, "Getting Comfortable with Change: ANew Budget Model for Libraries 
in Transition," Library Trends 42 (winter 1994): 448-59. 

10. Don A. Dillman, Mail and Telephone Surveys: The Total Design Method (New York: Wiley, 
1978). 

11. Whaley, "Reactions to 'Funding,"' 234. 
12. Campbell, "Getting Comfortable with Change," 450. 
13. Atkinson, "Crisis and Opportunity," 36. 
14. Campbell, "Getting Comfortable with Change," 449-50.