-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Serials Budget Allocation
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 17:18:21 -0500
From: Ian Woodward <iwoodward@mail.colgate.edu>

          Theoretically, your marginal expenditure (not the average
expenditure) per patron satisfied should be equal accross disciplines.
Were
it not, you could reallocate your budget, shifting funds from
disciplines
where the last dollar of expenditure per patron satisfied is
comparatively
high to those where it is comparatively low, and thereby satisfy more
patrons with the same expenditure.
        Only a rough approximation of such a decision rule can be put
into
practice.  The following steps might be followed:

1.   You should compile in a spreadsheet a mean annual use figure for
each
title in your serials collection --  ideally a sum of staff-reshelvings,
reserve use, and (if permitted in your establishment) check-outs.
Several
years of careful monitoring of your collection will be necessary to
produce
valid figures.  The raw figure will be erroneous because patrons
reshelve
things and staff are often lax in the execution of their functions.
However, this applies to all titles in the collection, so the internal
use
figure of any title when compared with the mean for your collection
should
yield more-or-less valid information.

2. A compilation of several years worth of the prices of all titles to
which
you subscribe averaged over a time period period of your choosing.  You
may
wish to make use of the current price, or the mean of a period of years
(the
most recent three or five or seven years, or whatever suits you) for
subsequent calculations.

3. From the foregoing data points, you should be able to construct a
price
per recorded use index for each title to which you subscribe, and then
rank
order your titles according to price per recorded use (from lowest to
highest).  From this rank ordering, you ought to exclude certain titles,
e.g.
        a. "Purchases on probation":  as it takes a certain size of run
for
patron to have something to use and a certain amount    of time for
patrons
to discover a title in your collection, you ought to exclude anything
you
have added to the       collection "recently" (say, in the last seven
years)
from your rank orderings, and take the expenditure on these titles as
"given".

        b. Titles for which document delivery is unavailable and
inter-library loan is not available from within a circle of libraries
which you have antecedently defined in consultation with your
inter-library
loan staff.  Some titles that fall into this    category may be such
duds
that you will wish to cancel anyway and reallocate to other purposes,
but
that ought be left      a separate decision.

4.  Having rank-ordered your subscriptions according to price per use,
select an arbitrary price-per-use figure and resolve to cancel every
title
whose performance has fallen below that standard.  Allocate sums freed
to
new subscriptions in disciplines whose most poorly performing title
carries
a price-per-use lower than the arbitrary standard you have selected.
You
will likely have a wish list of unfulfilled requests and may solicit
ideas
from the departments in question or by consulting reviews and core lists
and
comparing their recommendations to your holdings.

        The trouble with the foregoing procedure is that it assumes one
format with a common means for assessing internal use -- i.e. it is
designed
for use assessments and purchasing decistions for a print collection.
Incorporating use statistics on electronic editions of your print
collection
(if any such statistics be available) into your general use statistics
presents the formidable problem of identifying a fudge factor to be used
in
equating internal use of print with whatever datapoints on electronic
use
you are able to get hold of.
        A second problem that you would surely confront in America is
complaint from one or another faculty member registered at such time as
he
has discovered that you have cancelled his pet title and reallocated the
fund to purchase titles in comparative literature or social psychology
or
economics.  The degree of deference you will be compelled to show to
faculty
presumably varies from one institution to another.  I cannot say I have
ever
heard of an academic institution in this country were the librarians
felt
themselves to have thorough discretion over their serials budget.
        Antecedent to implementing the above, one would also have to
have a
satisfying definition of "discipline", perhaps derived from the academic
departmental boundaries in one's institution.
        At my own workplace, implementing such a system is an idea that
requires an eschatological imagination...

Best of luck, IW

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 08:36:16 +0800
From: Hj Awg Mohd Yussop POKIDDP Hj Awg Musa <yussop@lib.ubd.edu.bn>
Subject: Serials Budget Allocation

I am the Head of Technical Division responsible for books and serials
purchase and only recently joined the discussion groups. We have used
allocation formulas for books but not for serials. I know this issue
has been raised previously and would be grateful if you could provide
me some allocation formulas for serials that has been used.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Hj. Awg. Mohd. Yussop POKIDDP Hj. Awg. Musa
Head of Technical Services
For Chief Librarian
Universiti Brunei Darussalam Library

Tel No: 673 2 249002 ext 256
Fax No: 673 2 249504